{"id":24291,"date":"2014-04-11T07:00:19","date_gmt":"2014-04-11T13:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/?p=24291"},"modified":"2014-04-11T08:07:22","modified_gmt":"2014-04-11T14:07:22","slug":"frontiers-rights-of-human-subjects-in-scientific-papers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/2014\/frontiers-rights-of-human-subjects-in-scientific-papers\/","title":{"rendered":"Frontiers: Rights of Human Subjects in Scientific Papers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frontiers<\/a> clarifies further. Their clarification begins<\/p>\n

The retracted Recursive Fury paper has created quite a blogger and twitter storm. A sensational storm indeed, with hints to conspiracy theories, claims of legal threats and perceived contradictions. It has been fury – one of the strongest human emotions – that has (perhaps understandably at first sight) guided the discussion around this retraction. Not surprisingly though, the truth is not as sensational and much simpler. The studied subjects were explicitly identified in the paper without their consent. It is well acknowledged and accepted that in order to protect a subject\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rights and avoid a potentially defamatory outcome, one must obtain the subject\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s consent if they can be identified in a scientific paper. The mistake was detected after publication,<\/em> and the authors and Frontiers worked hard together for several months to try to find a solution. In the end, those efforts were not successful. The identity of the subjects could not be protected and the paper had to be retracted. Frontiers then worked closely with the authors on a mutually agreed and measured retraction statement to avoid the retraction itself being misused. From the storm this has created, it would seem we did not succeed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There you go. This pretty much matches what I’ve been wiring. Ethics, legal… all rolled into one. Doesn’t really matter who ‘trivial’ the characterization might seem1<\/a><\/sup>, they need to de-identify or get consent to identify individuals<\/em>. As far as ethics evaluations goes: potential for harm is what triggers the need for consent. When subjects are identified, ‘harm’ to the subject could<\/I> rise as high as defamation, or it might only be something as minor as “causing anxiety”, but one needs consent in both cases. <\/p>\n

Of course, Lewandowsky wants to focus on the notion that he could not lose a defamation case due to changes in UK law (though I would suggest it’s not clear that he could not lose if one were pursued. That depends on the details.) But to be retraction worthy, what he did does not need to be as severe as clear, obvious defamation that owing to changes in UK law now seem to make research journals super-immune to defamation suits. It only needs to have violated ethical principles whose laws are much stricter. <\/p>\n

It is my opinion that the paper was also methdologically flawed. I think it is worth pursuing steps to get UWA to understand that ethics violations occurred. As they seem blind to these, a clear case will need to be presented. But it seems that Frontiers has a ‘clear head’ and perceives the problem. <\/p>\n

Frontiers closes with <\/p>\n

But there was no moral dilemma from the start \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we do not support scientific publications where human subjects can be identified without their consent. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frontiers clarifies further. Their clarification begins The retracted Recursive Fury paper has created quite a blogger and twitter storm. A sensational storm indeed, with hints to conspiracy theories, claims of legal threats and perceived contradictions. It has been fury – one of the strongest human emotions – that has (perhaps understandably at first sight) guided … Continue reading Frontiers: Rights of Human Subjects in Scientific Papers<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rankexploits.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}