New subject: Important: Poll for support of subject recruitment for "Anonymity and conformity [...]" study

14 Nov 2011

Well, when it comes to

"I would be happy to give my approval conditionally on having (at
least) the student's supervisor involved. I actually think this
would be a sensible rule to apply to *all* SR proposals submitted
by students."

I have to say I could not agree, and here is the reason: we may
stumble upon many academic environments where students, or PhD
candidates, or young researchers in general are in fact more
competent in specific areas of research then their supervisors. Of
course, this is not a common situation, but if we talk about
Internet related research, where new concepts, new ideas, and new
methods are introduced every now and then, we are talking about a
field where the above described asymmetry in competences is likely
to appear.

Personal experience: between 2002. and 2005. a research team that
I have led in Belgrade, Serbia, published four books on Internet
behavior, Internet usage, attitudes towards the Internet and
related topics, of which none were peer-reviewed in Serbia. Why?
They were all supported by standard methodological, theoretical
and statistical instruments of social sciences. Most of the team
members already had experience in publishing in peer-reviewed
journals or presented at recognized conferences. Simply, because
that were the first attempts to study anything related to Internet
and society in my country at all, and there were no peer reviewers
available. I am literary saying that back then we were to first to
try to crawl for the relevant literature and references at all.

What I want to add is that most researchers who are into Internet
related research are people who are into new ideas, looking for
conceptual breakthroughs and new theoretical frameworks. Limiting
their efforts by constrains related to the already bureaucratized
relations in academia could end up in actually enlarging the pile
of problems on the behalf of people who simply want to put their
new ideas to test. Wikipedia was developed by people who decided
to abandon the classical rules and try with something previously
unimaginable: who would say it work to become of the landmarks of
the Internet? I believe we should keep that spirit when it comes
to research as well.

"I hope it's clear that I don't want to shut down research for
anybody but top researchers with big grants, but we also cannot
afford spending time and effort and community attention for
projects of an unclear scientific value or interest."

I recognize the importance of the issue you're raising, but I do
not think the selection criterion you are proposing will help us
sort out the projects of clear from the projects of unclear value
or interest. I believe, in the spirit of good faith, that task
needs to remain with us completely, as well as with the members of
the scientific community who we might contact and ask for an
advice when we are not sure what to do about a particular project
proposal.

Best,
Goran

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 11:03 PM, Dario Taraborelli
<dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org <mailto:dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org>>
wrote:

    ok, here's my dispassionate opinion. I post on the list
    because the problems I refer to below are not specific to this
    project but to many other requests.

    We have been receiving a *lot* of SR requests from students
    over the last few months and I think we should start deciding
    more aggressively what research is likely to have an impact
    and what research won't produce any major tangible results.

    I really like the topic of the Anonymity and Conformity study
    but I several concerns with the solidity of the current proposal:

    . we will be approving for the first time some kind of
    large-scale recruitment approach via user talk pages for a
    student project: this is something we've never done before and
    we should only do it if there's a good reason.

    . the advisor of the proponent doesn't seem to be involved at
    all in this project and is not even named in the proposal.
    Aaron asked the proponent to share the name of his supervisor
    in September, but he hasn't done so (yet?)

    . the proponent says that no funding is supporting this
    research and that this study is "conducted with the author's
    own efforts"

    . no one else other than the applicant will be implied in the
    data collection and analysis and the proponent doesn't seem to
    have an actual research record

    . there is no trace in this proposal of an approval by an
    ethics committee. The proponent says that this is not
    applicable (and it's true that IRB policy is very different
    between the US and other countries), but some official record
    would help us assess the credibility of the proposal.

    for these reasons, I am hesitant whether we should blindly
    approve this request. I would be happy to give my approval
    conditionally on having (at least) the student's supervisor
    involved. I actually think this would be a sensible rule to
    apply to *all* SR proposals submitted by students.

    I hope it's clear that I don't want to shut down research for
    anybody but top researchers with big grants, but we also
    cannot afford spending time and effort and community attention
    for projects of an unclear scientific value or interest.

    I'd love to hear your thoughts on this

    Dario

    On Nov 16, 2011, at 12:30 PM, Aaron Halfaker wrote:

Important: Poll for support of subject recruitment for "Anonymity and conformity [...]" study

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