appears
(in so far as I can grasp what it's about) to at least verge on being
medical information.
Medical information is subject to specific laws and an exceedingly brave
place to start a research project like this. In terms of potential harm to
research subjects (=readers of wikipedia) it pretty much hits the jackpot.
cheers
stuart
--
...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 8:22 PM, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','kerry.raymond@gmail.com');>>
wrote:
And to its policies
http://guru.psu.edu/policies/RP03.html
With particular reference to
"Intervention includes both physical procedures by which data are
gathered (for example, venipuncture) and manipulations of the participant
or the participant’s environment that are performed for research purposes."
Putting that articles into Wikipedia manipulated the environment of
Wikipedia readers and editors.
Now I am not saying that huge harm was done, you would have to ask
those who subsequently edited the articles (a known group) and those who
read the articles (an unknown group) to find out if they are unhappy about
what took place.
What I am saying is that if consideration had been given to the
question who is impacted by this research plan, the maybe the research plan
would have been redesigned to prevent the problem, and we would not have to
have this conversation.
Kerry
Sent from my iPad
On 12 Aug 2016, at 6:08 PM, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','kerry.raymond@gmail.com');>>
wrote:
I draw attention to Penn State's IRB website
https://www.research.psu.edu/irb/submit
Sent from my iPad
On 12 Aug 2016, at 6:03 PM, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','kerry.raymond@gmail.com');>>
wrote:
I am asking you to share the documentation of the ethical clearance or
exemption your institution would have required, not what people did or
didn't say to you as part of conference reviewing or at conferences.
Ethical clearance is a process that should have been undertaken before your
research commenced, not when you are writing the paper or attending a
conference. Are you saying you undertook the research without any
consideration of the ethics? Does your university have no guidelines about
this?
The Wikipedia guidelines about content analysis are not particularly
relevant here. You were not analysing existing Wikipedia articles but
injecting new articles of dubious quality into Wikipedia.
Nor is the data about individuals my point. If you wasted people's time
reacting to the articles created, you did them harm. If people derived
incorrect information from reading your articles, you did them harm. None
of those people were aware they were part of your research experiment; that
means they did not have informed consent in relation to choosing to
participate in your experiment. You could have generated the articles and
sought the opinions of readers and editors of Wikipedia on those articles
without placing them into Wikipedia itself. That way would have enabled
informed consent; others not wishing to take part would not be mislead into
doing so.
Sent from my iPad
On 12 Aug 2016, at 3:24 PM, siddhartha banerjee <sidd2006(a)gmail.com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','sidd2006@gmail.com');>> wrote:
I thought I should add this too as I missed it in the previous email.
This link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ethically_rese
arching_Wikipedia
talks about the Content Analysis (seeing number of references removed,
or content removed)-- which we did (with the few articles) and that is
what we followed as it says "generally considered exempt from such
requirements and does not require an IRB approval.".
My advisor should be able to add more thoughts on it (I have requested
him to reply on this thread).
Thanks,
Sidd
On Thu, Aug 11, 2016 at 9:36 PM, siddhartha banerjee <
sidd2006(a)gmail.com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','sidd2006@gmail.com');>
> wrote:
> As I have mentioned earlier, this is not the first work on article
> generation. This is one of the first work we know:
>
https://people.csail.mit.edu/csauper/pubs/sauper-sm-thesis.pdf
>
https://people.csail.mit.edu/regina/my_papers/wiki.pdf
> All these did not mention anything about human subjects as finally no
> personal information is used (about the person, who is deleting, etc). Nor
> did any reviewers/attendees in the conferences in this area question on
> this aspect.
> Also,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Sign
> post/2015-01-28/Recent_research is relevant here as it talks about
> our previous work.
>
> if "record of someone doing something" is relevant from human
> subjects point of view, any data on Wikipedia can be used to find the
> editors (if not the real person). For example:
>
https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/AAAI/AAAI11/paper/viewFil
> e/3505/3968
>
https://alchemy.cs.washington.edu/papers/wu08/wu08.pdf
> I have met several researchers who work using data (revisions from
> Wikipedia) and nothin on IRB ever came up.
>
> Nevertheless, as I said, if there are concrete rules, I think it would
> help the research community as a whole to know what can or cannot be done
> and also ask for permissions.
> I appreciate the suggestions that Stuart mentioned in a previous email
> abut experimenting on would be deleted or articles lacking sources. But, as
> of now we are not planning anything and if we do, we would for sure get in
> touch with Denny (who had a video chat with me before starting this thread)
> and would try to know the best ways of doing it.
>
> I have asked my PhD advisor (other author on the paper) to check this
> thread and he will be able to give more inputs as I am not very qualified
> to comment on these aspects.
>
> Thanks,
> Sidd
>
>
>
>
>
>
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