To answer John Vandenberg's question about the image filter survey "Was this survey approved by the Research Committee?"
RCOM collectively was not consulted, though individual RCOM members may have been.
WereSpielChequers ------------------------------
Message: 5 Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2011 00:23:14 +1000 From: John Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: <CAO9U_Z5=GbrO6j=0vmMuhPw2P5PE_Z_GPtQYySH6LzN2reD1Tg@mail.gmail.com
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On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 11:50 PM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
... At Research committee list [1] there is ongoing discussion related to John Vanderberg's question "Was this survey approved by the Research Committee?" [2]. Research committee wasn't asked, of course (and WereSpielChequers is working on statement). Because, simply, politically motivated junk science requires implementation, not questions about validity of premises.
[1]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/rcom-l/2011-September/000327.html
[2]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-September/067889.html
Thank you for pointing this out Milos. I wasnt aware that RCom's email list is public. That is good.
This survey may not be feeding into scientific research publications, however the principles of human research ethics should still apply to any survey of the public, especially when conducted by organisations funded by the public. The survey instruments used should be valid, and the survey results should be discard if the survey population was not satisfactory.
-- John Vandenberg