263 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2016
    1. opportunties

      Thank you very much for the opportunity to participate in this Open Review and to gain early access to a book, which I have been looking for and wanting to read for a while. It promises to be a very interesting, timely, and exciting contribution, which is much needed, especially as we begin to tackle the ethical questions in the digital age and there is no obvious guide and many of the digital phenomena that are being studied are still poorly understood. I have enjoyed making comments and being part of the conversation here in the Open Review very much and I look forward to reading the final version of the book! Many thanks again for making it possible for curious and non-expert readers like myself.

    1. the researcher could try to contact a sample of Bitcoin users and ask for their informed consent

      As far as I understand, and since blockchain as transparent ledger is about revealing transactions to whoever wants to or has the mathematical capacity to know them, I am not sure this is such a good example after all because the people who participate in this type of digital economy must consent to their data being transparent.

    1. would I be comfortable if my research procedures were written about on the front page of my home town newspaper?

      A write up on the front page of the home town newspaper does not necessarily mean it is a critical article - I think the point is not the treatment in the press, but the level of comfort with publicaly disclosing the information about the study if need be.

    1. In this case, one group of students bears the burdens of the research and society as a whole benefits.

      The class of 2009, was it? They were the first class graduating into a very different job market, after the economy crashed. They very likely had bigger problems than some graduate student researcher looking up their Facebook profile, especially since in those days the "network" feature would render their profiles to be visible to anyone on the Harvard network. But yes, their service to knowledge and society should have at least got them a gift certificate to the Coop Bookstore!

    1. community

      Intuitively I agree with the possibility that the fabric of the community would be disrupted by favoritism and unfairness in rewarding for hard work but I am still not sure what this sentence means.

    1. 2026 or 2046

      Not a serious academic comment but I wonder what ethical concerns were raised by the book called "My Freshman Year" which was an outcome of a professor's clandestine presence in a college to study and observe undergraduates to form a better understanding of who they were. Was it due to the fact that it was done in the pre-internet era that it raised relatively small outcry? The book was given out as a freshman year self-help reading material at my college, for example. I feel like Harvard has such a special relationship with Facebook that it sometimes seems that all moves are allowed. Then again, I have not read the Lewis papers yet so I cannot tell to what extend they reveal information that Harvard students wouldn't tell you themselves anyway. I'm kidding, I also think that it was not cool to study them without their informed consent.

    2. things are moving in that direction.

      This made me think of the thought experiment with surveillance cameras in "Bursts" and of the artist Hassan M. Elahi who records every single thing he does to make a statement on the surveillance demands of modern times.

    3. well-meaning researchers

      Personally, the connection between unethical uses of for instance Facebook feed and mental health are the reason why the IRB should take closer look at the computer science proposals. The researchers mean no harm but if the phenomenon they are triggering is not well understood by the scientific community, or any community for that matter, because it is so new, then a saying comes to mind: the road to hell is paved with good intentions..

    1. processing of images

      This type of carefully thought out and evidenced reassurance is needed badly as we're being bombarded by news of AI and machine learning making huge strides in these fields. And even though I love Google Photos it freaks me out how good at image recognition it is becoming since their use of neural networks, so for how long will your argument hold? I'm not sure I'm ready to hear the answer!

    1. each of these cases.

      I understand the need to refer to historical cases for illustrating these differences but I would be curious to see some modern day studies classified this way and if their authors would be comfortable with this division and assessment.

    1. which shows just how difficult it is to execute successfully

      Apologies for being a cynic but the improved product does not necessarily lead to more research, more likely it leads to more sales and more money. There is perhaps a continuous feedback loop dedicated to improving a well-selling product and that generates research that necessitates that. Hopefully, though, this feedback loop is real and it results in more research, though this is a very academic perspective. An industry perspective would be to leave the final word on this to the R&D budget.

    1. (e.g., cApitalization errors and spelin errors)

      I'm not sure if I like or dislike this mental shortcut. Probably for learning purposes I would prefer for these errors to just be named correctly.

    1. that receiving a handwritten emoticon as part of a study sponsored by a university might have a larger effect on behavior than receiving a printed emoticon as part of a mass produced report from a power company

      It is clear that this happened but what did they speculate caused it? The university's reputation? The relative unknown status of the company? Or was it the distinction between reacting positively to a hand-written vs. printed, so towards more personal vs. generic information?

    1. That is, we have learned something about public opinion from this result.

      I'm missing a conclusion related to this data, so what does this result mean for American spending, or what did it lead to? Even as a curiosity it would be interesting to know some follow up about this finding.

    1. the golden age of survey research

      The golden age was mentioned in the first paragraph as a possibility as regards to the future but now we read that it's actually considered by most to be in the past. This sentence makes the case for the golden age = digital age somewhat weak so perhaps it needs to be taken out or rephrased.

    2. Despite the pessimism that some survey researchers currently feel,

      What are the grounds for this pessimism? Perhaps some more on this would help to determine how justified they are or aren't.

    1. Facebook also has developed a proceed to link their records to voting behavior

      This is written pre-November 2016 so I wonder if updates with new scholarly analyses could follow up about how Facebook influenced US election results.

    1. so long after the draft

      Perhaps more explicit "five years after the draft" or rearrange the sentence: "and found that there was little long-term effect ... so long after the draft"