Alice Goffman, ethics, and advising

Originally posted at www.21stcenturyscholar.org

A few years ago, as a graduate student at USC, I visited the American Sociological Association’s website. A name grabbed my attention. “Goffman,” I thought, “She can’t be related to the Goffman.” Alice Goffman, as it turns out, is the daughter of renowned sociologist Erving Goffman. I hurried to Google. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton. She conducted ethnographic research. She won ASA’s dissertation of the year. And, she became an Assistant Professor at Wisconsin.

So, here we are a few years later. This spring, she published On the Run, an account of her dissertation research. She is embroiled in a scandal (or witch hunt, depending on your perspective). At the center of the controversy is a scene in which the “rogue sociologist” drives a young man around the neighborhood in order to avenge a friend’s murder. The man has a gun and wants to use it. Reviewer Steven Lubet noted that the researcher, by driving the car, engaged in conspiracy to commit murder according to Pennsylvania statute. Goffman denies it, claiming the ride was about catharsis, not murder. I believe her; however, the case isn’t simple. As my lawyer wife has reminded me before a few trips to collect data, ignorance of the law is not a defense. In other words, if I am arrested while conducting a participant observation with a teenager selling drugs on a street corner, I can’t say, “But officer, in the name of science, I’m a researcher!” 

Several academics have commented about the tricky and contextual nature of ethics and ethnography. For an informed discussion, see anthropologist Paul Stoller’s take in the Huffington Post. I could go on about the book and design, but I will save that for another time. I read the ethnography. I was underwhelmed. The focus—the impact of surveillance and over-policing on black men in low-income neighborhoods—is important and necessary. However, agreeing with Patrick Sharkey’s observation, the argument lacks empirical support. She often presents statements without evidence.

Although she received high praise—the front- and back-cover include blurbs, which verge on unctuous, from superstars like Cornel West, Carol Stack, Elijah Anderson, and Malcolm Gladwell—it’s still dissertation research. That does not absolve a researcher from creating a sound research design and upholding high ethical standards. But, a number of conditions—including quality mentoring and prolonged engagement with scholarship and practice—are necessary to become a skilled qualitative researcher. One study does not an expert make. She deserves the benefit of the doubt, at least until proven otherwise.

I assume Alice Goffman is well-meaning and didn’t willfully commit conspiracy to commit murder. I know she is an early career faculty member and has the right to learn and improve. I also know that research is subjective. It depends on countless factors, including research experience and researcher / participant positionality. Critics who assert that there is an objective roadmap about how to conduct and judge research (and that Goffman ripped it up) are wrong. Last, I assume that Goffman has a lot of important scholarship ahead of her. I look forward to reading it.

Research rarely receives so much attention or stimulates so much dialogue. Conversations about ethics and research are important. So too are exchanges about two of the most pressing policy issues in our country: the increase of concentrated poverty and its negative effects. So far, discussions have focused on whether or not Goffman messed up. I get the sense that a number of people would rather vilify her than engage in productive dialogue about underlying issues, like how we train scholars to conduct ethical research; how social position influences factors such as who conducts research and where; and, how we develop policies to improve pathways from school to career, not school to prison. That’s unfortunate.

As a postscript, last week, The Chronicle published a comprehensive review of the case. At the end of the article, the author includes a surprise detail:

Ms. Goffman’s graduate-school adviser at Princeton, Mitchell Duneier, also defends her work — mostly. She crossed an ethical line in the episode that Mr. Lubet argues was a crime, Mr. Duneier says, and she left herself open to criticism with her thin discussion of it in her text. But he vouches for the credibility of her book. One reason is that he has met some of her subjects himself.

While Ms. Goffman was working on the dissertation that she would ultimately develop into On the Run, Mr. Duneier conducted independent interviews with some of her subjects. Ethnographers, in his view, should identify the people and places in their studies when possible. The sensitivity of Ms. Goffman’s research made that standard of transparency impossible, Mr. Duneier says. So, while he trusted Ms. Goffman, he also took steps to ensure his own comfort with her story. "I feel confident in the research that I supervised as an adviser and that our committee approved at Princeton," he says.

Just as ethics and quality of research are inextricably linked, the care, time, and expertise of an advisor is critical to the training of his or her advisee. Mitch Duneier—an accomplished Princeton professor, the skilled ethnographer who wrote Slim’s Table and Sidewalk, and an extremely busy person, I’m sure—took the time to interview his advisee’s participants in order to ensure the quality of her research. Think about that for a moment.

Update: Steven Lubet wrote a follow-up article.

Ferguson, ethics, and the public intellectual

Originally published at www.21stcenturyscholar.org

During the 1890s, newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst competed against each other to sell more papers. They printed sensationalist stories accompanied with fear-inducing headlines and vivid, provocative pictures. Journalists eschewed facts for melodrama. At the height of yellow journalism, the two newspaper tycoons published stories that contributed to the United States’ involvement in the Spanish-American War. 

Fast-forward 120 years. In Ferguson, Missouri, a 28-year-old white police officer shoots an 18-year-old black man. Residents protest. Droves of reporters travel to Ferguson. Over three months later, following months of unrest and anticipating even more, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declares a state of emergency. One week afterwards, a grand jury decides not to indict the police officer with criminal charges. Violent and nonviolent protests escalate. Journalists chase and film rioters. They flood newspapers, television channels, and social media with panic-inducing stories and images. Cable channels cut from out-of-breath reporters in the field to argumentative talking heads in the studio.

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The media has largely influenced the ways in which the public talks and thinks about Michael Brown’s death and the subsequent protests. Rather than facilitating civil, fact-based exchanges, they encourage vehement, opinion-based disagreement. Their actions starkly differ from the ethics of journalism, which include pursuing truth, reporting accurately, and limiting harm. If there is such a thing as a 21st century public sphere—a place where we can intellectually discuss important social issues—the media is corrupting it.

What, then, is the role of academics? Consider some of the ethical concerns of researchers: beneficence, respect, and justice. While we typically discuss those ideals in terms of the conduct of research, we may also consider them in relation to when and how scholars participate in public forums. 

Stated more simply, while talking heads whip up racist antagonism and blame individuals, research is resolute. Young men of color disproportionately experience gun violence. A discriminatory police state surveils low-income neighborhoods. We have established clearer pathways from school to prison than school to college. And, due to a lack of opportunities, concentrated and generational poverty has spread among individuals of color.

While sitting in Birmingham Jail, Dr. King wrote, “Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” We have few forums to thoughtfully and critically discuss the pursuit of social justice and the existence of injustice in the United States. Scholars have an ethical responsibility to assume an increased role in public discourse, to illuminate the pressing causes and consequences of injustice, and to help imagine opportunities for social justice in the 21st century.

Friends, lovers, and social media experimentation: The need for new ethical guidelines

I. Facebook doesn’t care about ethics, so why should you?

The internet nearly broke when researchers published a new study, “Experimental Evidence of Massive-scale Emotional Contagion through Social Networks.” Scientists, conducting a psychological experiment including approximately 700,000 Facebook users, manipulated news feeds to examine the effects of positive and negative posts. Researchers found that Facebook posts influence users’ moods; the general public and research community learned that Facebook does not care about ethics. 

To conduct research, scholars must obtain approval from Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). The Facebook researchers neither obtained permission from an IRB nor received informed consent from participants. Instead, they used Facebook’s Data Use Policy to justify their methods. Data use policies and end-user agreements, if you don’t know, are those wordy and complicated messages that pop up when users join and dismiss within a few scrolls and a click. Anticipating backlash, the editorial board of the journal justified their decision by highlighting the import of the study and the fact that Facebook is a private company. The explanations raise more questions than they answer.

As evidenced by a dizzying array of advertisements running along the side of your feed, Facebook is a money-making enterprise. Their motivations differ from research universities. Timothy Ryan thoughtfully notes that businesses frequently conduct market research and commercial experiments. It is not until individuals translate private findings into public scholarship that issues arise. And, that is the major issue: Why is any group, regardless of industry, allowed to conduct unregulated experiments that may harm human subjects? 

II. Move over Facebook, OKCupid loves unethical experiments too

OKCupid, a popular matchmaking website, didn’t take long to provide a more egregious example of unethical practices. Less than a month after the Facebook controversy, they released findings from three studies. The most deceptive experiment included the company manipulating compatibility scores—in some cases, changing them from 30 to 90 percent—to monitor effects on interactions between matches. They emailed unknowing users the correct scores after the experiment. Like Facebook, OKCupid cited their user agreement as justification.

Unlike Facebook’s experiment, OKCupid’s studies present dubious scientific value and perverse underlying assumptions. Facebook published their findings in a peer-reviewed journal. While the experiment undoubtedly helps the social media company, it also contributes to a body of scientific knowledge. The researchers did not obtain informed consent; however, they could plausibly argue that study benefits outweighed participants’ risks. There was a hint of beneficence. Capitalizing on the recent debate about the other experiment, OKCupid posted findings on OKTrends, their own quirky and entertaining marketing blog and used the attention to advertise an upcoming book. 

Christian Rudder, OKCupid’s president and co-founder, published an unapologetic blog about the experiments. He justified the research, stating “We noticed recently that people didn’t like it when Facebook ‘experimented’ with their news feed. Even the FTC is getting involved. But guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That’s how websites work.” Rudder does not address ethics or informed consent. He invokes a coder’s ethos where curiosity, experimentation, and trial and error are key ingredients. He ignores a key fact: Data are people too, and tinkering with code could cause harm. He even belittles internet users, implying they are foolish to expect trustworthiness and transparency from companies. 

Let’s think about Rudder’s point and extend it to a more accessible example. We all know that companies conduct market research. When I shop at a popular big box store, I understand that they gather data based on my shopping habits. They track my movements in the store and the impact of a new Transformers endcap on my purchasing habits. I also assume that what I see is what I get, that the store is not willfully deceiving me, and that any data they collect will be anonymous, unless I provide informed consent. When I take my Cheez-Its to the checkout counter, I expect to pay the advertised price for a box of delicious cheesy crackers. According to Rudder’s reasoning, the store has the right to change the contents of the box and the consumer is naive for expecting otherwise. 

Now, let’s think about social media correlates. Most of us know that websites monitor our browsing habits. During my wife’s pregnancy, we spent nine months searching for baby gear. I’m not surprised when I see Babies R Us ads splattered across my Facebook page; I get that. There are trade-offs on social media. If I sign up for a dating website like Match.com (which, incidentally, is how I met my wife), I expect that the premise and underlying framework are trustworthy. I take a quiz. Someone else takes a quiz. Then, the website uses a well-tested algorithm to match us. Based on the OKCupid scenario, I’m foolish. At any moment, I could find out that my wife doesn’t share the same political views as me; she doesn’t like watching football; and, she doesn’t care about my level of education. 

Rudder’s comments are shockingly tone deaf given the current milieu regarding social media ethics and best practices. His lack of remorse or awareness—coupled with his book promotion—add a level of creepiness. OKCupid’s experiments seem an equal measure of loose ethics and slimy publicity. Unfortunately for Rudder, even though he dismisses critics, the FTC may be getting involved with OKCupid too.

III. Analog Ethics in a Digital World

The 20th century provides numerous examples of misguided research that placed individuals at risk, from the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to Stanford Prison Experiment. In the United States, the National Research Act of 1974, which created the first national committee to establish ethics policy, was an important step towards protecting human subjects and limiting the potential for malfeasance. But, there’s more work to be done.

As we enter the 21st century, emerging technologies and digital spaces provide new opportunities for abuses of power. I have read a few commentators argue that people have a choice. Stay off social media or get informed, they say. That’s a naïve and unrealistic perspective. Facebook and YouTube both amass over a billion users per month. Social media has become a significant part of our lives. Others argue that all social media companies experiment. Social scientists don’t understand and they shouldn’t stifle a new golden age for knowledge creation. The arguments echo previous examples when a few power drunk individuals made unsound decisions that influenced many.

As social media companies accumulate more power and influence, we should demand increased ethical responsibility and accountability. They cannot reasonably expect users to waive all personal rights through some end-user agreement sleight of hand.

The Facebook and OKCupid studies are important not just because of what occurred but also because of what they portend. Before we have truly lamentable examples of user and data abuse, policymakers need to commission a new set of ethical principles that meet the needs of the 21st century.