Research Ethics in Psychology

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Despite the fact that social psychological research typically does not have life and death consequences, such research can have an impact on individual health and well-being. Whether through participation in the study itself or through the implications of research findings, research may have unintended and unethical consequences. It is therefore incumbent on anyone conducting social psychological research to be familiar with both APA’s policies and those of their institution’s institutional review board regarding research with human participants.

For this Discussion, review the given resources, and think about what ethical considerations you might need to make related to social psychology research.

Write a brief explanation of how you might use ethics when forming research questions (use the APA’s Code of Conduct to inform your response). Then explain two potential consequences if ethics are not considered. Finally, explain two ways culture might inform the development of your research question, and explain what ethical considerations you may need to consider.

Be sure to support your writing with the resources.

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http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx

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Research Using Intentional Deception Ethical Issues Revisited Diana Baumrind This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. II I Ill Illllll Illll University of California, Berkeley Illllll Illllll ABSTRACT: Ethical issues concerning the use of intentional deception in research with human participants are revisited 10 years after the publication of the 1973 APA guidelines on the conduct of research with human subjects. Intentional deception is defined. The present status of guidelines concerning intentional deception and the incidence and extremity of deception being used are reviewed, leading to the conclusion that the former has not decreased the latter. My position proscribing intentionally deceptive research is grounded in rule-utilitarian metaethics by contrast to act-utilitarian and deontological metaethics; three ethical rules proscribing intentional deception in the research setting are presented. The costs to subjects, the profession, and society are reviewed, and arguments are brought to bear against the scientific benefits claimed for deceptive instructions, In this context, the scientific problems with social psychological experimentation are discussed. Finally, certain recommendations for research strategies in lieu of deception paradigms, and for appropriate debriefing, are offered. In a series of articles (Baumrind, 1964, 1971, 1972, 1975a, 1975b, 1978, I979), beginning with a critique of the Milgram (1964) paradigm, I argue that the use of intentional deception in the research setting is unethical, imprudent, and unwarranted scientifically. In response to my latest article (Baumrind, 1979), Baron (1981) offered "'an openly optimistic rejoinder." He claimed that deception research is necessary to accomplish beneficial scientific ends and that as a result of the guidelines researchers now use informed consent and thorough debriefing. Two respondents took exception to Baron's optimistic rejoinder. Dresser (1981) pointed out that in distorting a study's true purpose the investigator necessarily grounds participants" willingness to cooperate on misinformed consent. Goldstein (1981) argued that participants' rights to autonomy, dignity, and privacy are necessarily violated by deceptive research practices and rejected Baron's assurance that experimenters were now sensitized to ethical issues. Surveys of the major social psychological journals suggest that Goldstein is correct and Baron's optimism is unwarranted. Ten years after publication of the February 1985 • American Psychologist Cofs~ti~t 1985 by the American Ps~hok~ical Association, Inc. ~3-066X/85/$00.75 Vol. 40, No. 2, 165-174 II I Illllllll Ethical Principles in the Conduct of Research With Human Participants (American Psychological Association, 1973), I was invited to revisit these issues in the context of a symposium on ethics of deception research delivered to the International Society for Research on Aggression. By intentional deception I mean withholding information in order to obtain participation that the participant might otherwise decline, using deceptive instructions and confederate manipulations in laboratory research, and employing concealment and staged manipulations in field settings. Because perfect communication between human beings is impossible to achieve, there will always be some degree of misunderstanding in the contract between researcher and subject. Full disclosure of everything that could possibly affect a given subject's decision to participate is not possible, and therefore cannot be ethically required. Provided that participants agree to postponement of full disclosure of the purposes of the research, absence of full disclosure does not constitute intentional deception. The investigator whose purpose is "to take the person unaware by trickery" or to "'cause the person to believe the false" in order to minimize ambiguity about causal inference is intentionally deceiving subject-participants to further the investigator's scientific ends or career goals. Investigators continue to use intentional deception and to justify its use. Epistemological superiority is accorded to deceptive methods as a means of controlling the demand characteristics of the setting by assuring that all subjects believe the situation to be realistic and perceive it in the same way. If intentional deception does not accomplish this objective, its epistemological superiority is doubtful, which in turn casts doubt on the benefits of intentional deception and thus on the justification for its use. Although the examples I offer are drawn largely from aggression research, the justification for deceptive practices arises from the research paradigm that guides experimental social psychology as a whole. It is necessary, therefore, to examine that paradigm. Present Status of Deception Research If deceit is used to obtain consent, by definition it cannot be informed. Deceptive instructions logically 165 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. contradict the informed consent provision contained ognized hearing deficit on the development of parain all federal and professional ethical guidelines. Yet noia; Zimbardo et al. then misinformed subjects as these guidelines do permit each o f the provisions to the purpose of the experiment and what experiguaranteeing informed consent to be waived provided ences they would undergo and recruited subjects that some or all considerations such as the following with the promise that they would continue to play a part in his research, a promise that was not kept; pertain: and (d) Marshall and Zimbardo (1979) used multiple (a) The research objective is of great importance and high-magnitude deceptions to study the affective cannot be achieved without the use of deception; (b) on consequences of inadequately explained physiological being fully informed later (Principle E), participants are expected to find the procedures reasonable and to suffer arousal; they misinformed subjects about the purpose no loss of confidence in the integrity of the investigator of the experiment; they manipulated physiological or of others involved; (c) research participants are allowed arousal via injection o f epinephrine or placebo after t o withdraw from the study at any time (Principle F), and telling subjects that they would receive a vitamin are free to withdraw their data when the concealment or injection; and they misled subjects into thinking misrepresentation is revealed (Principle H); and (e) inves- their responses were not being monitored when they tigators take full responsibility for detecting and removing were. They then postponed debriefing for six weeks stressful aftereffects of the experience (Principle I). (Amer- until all subjects had been tested. The IRB permitted ican Psychological Association, 1982, p. 41) all of the above manipulations, balking only at a No strategic guidelines are included to assure that planned "angry" condition on the basis that it was these considerations pertain. Institutional review unethical to induce anger in unsuspecting subjects. boards (IRBs), as well as investigators, are at liberty to set their own. Rule-Utilitarian Objections Neither the incidence nor the magnitude of de- to Deception Research ception reported in social psychological research appears to have decreased since 1973.)Thus, the The cost-benefit analysis arising from the metaethical APA guidelines appear to serve an expressive rather justification called act-utilitarianism (Frankena, than a deterrent function. McNamara and Woods 1963) is used to justify these exceptions. By contrast, (1977) reported a rise to 57% in a survey covering deontological or rule-utilitarian metaethical positions the years 1971 to 1974. In the most recent study do not lend themselves to justification of the use of (Smith & Richardson, 19837, approximately half of deceptive research practices. From both these more the 464 psychology undergraduates surveyed reported stringent metaethical positions, if informed consent that the experiment in which they had participated is a right of participants and intentional deception used deception. Both figures exceed Seeman's (1969) a necessary violation of that right, then intentional figures of 18% in 1948 and 37% in 1963. The deception is to be avoided in the research setting. The thesis of act-utilitarianism is that a particmaximum magnitude of reported deception has not ular act is right if, and only if, no other act the decreased as four exemplars published since the agent could perform at the time would have, on the 1973 APA guidelines will illustrate: (a) Milgram's agent's evidence, better consequences. From an actparadigm was duplicated by Shanab and Yahya (1977) with children as young as six; graphic reports utilitarian stance, if in the opinion of the investigator, of the children's reactions document trembling, lip the requirements of the research demand that the biting, and nervous laughter; (b) White (1979) used participants be kept unaware that they are being a typical aggression paradigm in which a confederate studied or deception must be used to create a angered real subjects by evaluating them personally psychological reality in order to permit valid inferin a highly negative and insulting manner; subjects ence, then failure to obtain informed consent, conwere then asked to administer shocks to the confed- cealment, and deception could be justified. The erate, after being given a false cover story as to the decision would be made by the investigator applying purpose of the experiment; (c) Zimbardo, Andersen, a cost-benefit calculus to the specific situation. Actand Kabat (1981) induced partial deafness through utilitarianism, by comparison with rule-utilitarianposthypnotic suggestion to study the effect of unrec- ism, falls short as a metaethical system of justification because (a) it fails to consider the substantive rights of the minority, (b) it fails to take long-range costs While writing this article the author was supported by grants into account, and (c) it is subjective and not generfrom the W. T. Grant Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. alizable. It takes little to convince a researcher or a MacArthur Foundation, and a Research Scientist Award from the review board of his or her peers that the long-range National Institute of Mental Health. Requests for reprints should be sent to Diana Baumrind, benefits of a clever bit of deceptive manipulation Institute of Human Development, 1203 Edward Chace Tolman outweigh the short-range costs to participants of Hall, Universityof California, Berkeley,California94720. being deceived. The long-range costs to subjects and 166 February 1985 • American Psychologist This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. society are unknown and therefore are easy for investigators and review boards to dismiss. It is difficult to imagine more extreme instances of deception than those provided by Zimbardo's experiments, and yet both were approved by the Stanford IRB, subsequent to 1973, just as Milgram's experiments had been reviewed favorably at Yale prior to 1973. Deontological moralists (e.g., Wallwork, 1975) claim that the basic judgments of obligation are perceived as being given intuitively without recourse to consideration of what serves as the common good. For deontologists such as Kant, the principle of justice or truth or the value of life stands by itself without regard to any balance of good over evil for self, society, or the universe. By contrast, I hold, with Waddington (1960), that the function of ethical beliefs is to mediate human evolution so that there can be no principles, including preservation of life, distributive justice, and trustworthiness that are absolutely inviolable. I ground my judgment that intentional deception in the research setting is morally wrong not in act-utilitarianism (which is too relativistic) or in a deontological categorical imperative (which is too dogmatic), but rather in rule-utilitarianism, the view that an act is right if, and only if, it would be as beneficial to the common good in a particular social context to have a moral code permitting that act as to operate under a rule that would prohibit that act. In Western society, as a result of innate or learned behaviors associated with optimum survival for our community, most of us elevate rules of social living that maximize the opportunity for self-determination so that we may hold each other accountable for our actions. Also, we share strong aversions to certain types of actions. We are averse to hurting others, killing others, and telling lies, and so we feel that we must justify these acts if we intentionally commit them. Those of us who are rule-utilitarians grant that even actions to which we have strong moral aversions are justifiable in certain contexts. Thus, retaliative aggression may be justifiable provided that it is proportionate to the grievance; killing may be justifiable if our victim is an enemy or a murderer or a fetus under three months; telling lies may be justifiable if intended to benefit the recipient and not the liar; hurting others may be justifiable if we are dentists or surgeons. However, by justifying morally aversive acts we legitimate them, and this, too, has social consequences, because harm inflicted self-righteously may appear to demand no reparation and is not self-correcting. Why is intentional deception in the context of the research endeavor so wrong from a rule-utilitarian perspective? At least three ethical rules generally accepted in Western society proscribe deceitful reFebruary 1985 • American Psychologist search practices: (a) the right of self-determination within the law, which translates in the research setting to the right of informed consent; (b) the obligation of a fiduciary (in this case, the researcher) to protect the welfare of the beneficiary (in this case, the subject); and (c) the obligation, particularly of a fiduciary, to be trustworthy in order to provide sufficient social stability to facilitate self-determined agentic behavior. Consistent with a rule-utilitarian position, I propose to ground these rules teleologicaUy by arguing that their adoption benefits modern Anglo-American society more than contradictory rules, thus explaining their general acceptance. The principle of informed consent is a manifestation of the basic right granted each individual in Anglo-American political philosophy and tradition to be self-determining and let alone so long as the individual is not interfering with the rights of other individuals or the public. According to Sir William Blackstone (t 765-1769/1941), individuals surrender to society many rights and privileges that they would be free to exercise in a state of nature, in exchange for benefits that each receives as a member of society. Each citizen retains, however, certain fights and privileges that the public may not abrogate without the citizen's consent. Thus, subjects have the right to judge for themselves whether being lied to or learning something painful about themselves constitutes psychological harm for them. A violation of an individual's right of informed consent is a breach of the social contract and thus legitimates retaliative lawlessness because only in a rule-following environment may we be held fully accountable for the consequences of our actions. Therefore, social scientists must exercise their right to seek knowledge within the constraints imposed by the right to informed consent of those persons from whom they would obtain that knowledge. Further, the basic rules of fiduciary law apply to the researcher-subject and the teacher-student relationships (Holder, 1982). A fiduciary obligation pertains when a person, called the fiduciary, is dealing with another under circumstances involving the placing of a special confidence. The overriding duty of the fiduciary is loyalty and trustworthiness by contrast to the principle of "caveat emptor," which may apply to some sales relations. If challenged, the burden of proof is on the fiduciary to show loyalty and trustworthiness. It is illogical for an investigator to justify the use of deceit by appealing to the special quality of the investigatorsubject relationship when it is just that special quality that enables the investigator to recruit participants and establishes the fiduciary obligations of the investigator to be trustworthy in relations with them. If the rule that justifies scientific experimentation is "You shall know the truth, and the truth 167 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. shall set you free," then that rule applies also in the conduct o f science. Finally, violation o f trust is generally held to be immoral, and even more so in a fiduciary relationship, especially when the subject is also a student for whom the experimenter serves as a model. If the student is beguiled, his or her trust has been misplaced. If the student is not beguiled, then deceptive instructions do not undermine trust. Psychology undergraduates in heavily experimental departments expect rigged lotteries, deceptive instructions, and the use of confederates. Those who adopt a gameset are not likely to be disillusioned because they do not assume that the experimenter is trustworthy. Under those conditions, subjects may be beguiled, but they are not betrayed. The wrong done as well as the harm done is trivial. But to the extent that students routinely suspend belief, then experimental control has not been achieved by deceptive instructions, and there are no benefits to weigh against the costs. The costs include encouraging students to lie in the interests of science and career advancement. Even from the permissive stance of an actutilitarian cost-benefit analysis, it is the responsibility of investigators who wish to use deceptive practices that fail to conform to the informed consent provision o f the ethical guidelines to demonstrate first, that the social and scientific benefits o f their proposed research objectives are indeed sufficiently significant to offset the costs to participants, the profession, and society; second, that the research paradigm will effectively accomplish those objectives; and third, that those objectives cannot be accomplished equally well by using nondeceptive research paradigms. We proceed now to reexamine the costs and benefits o f deception research. I was harmed in an area of my thinking which was central to my personal development at that time. Many of us who volunteered for the experiment were hoping to learn something about ourselves that would help us to gauge our own strengths and weaknesses, and formulate rules for living that took them into account. When, instead, I learned that I did not have any trustworthy way of knowing myself--or anything else--and hence could have no confidence in any lifestyle I formed on the basis of my knowledge, I was not only disappointed, but felt that I had somehow been cheated into learning, not what I needed to learn, but something which stymied my very efforts to learn. I told literally no one about it for eight years because of a vague feeling of shame over having let myself be tricked and duped. It was only when I realized that I was not peculiar but had, on the contrary, had a typical experience that I first recounted it publicly. (Baumrind, 1978, pp. 22-23) Anecdotal evidence such as this has been challenged as hearsay. A number o f studies have been undertaken to establish whether subjects are harmed by deception experiments. The results are equivocal. However, most of these studies rely on self-report rather than behavioral evidence. About 80% of subjects, when asked, say that they were glad to have participated in the experiment. This is used illogically to establish that subjects suffered no harm. Thus, Milgram (1974, p. 195) justified his shocking procedure by citing results o f a follow-up questionnaire in which 84% of subjects said they were glad to have participated in the experiment. However, as Patten (1977) pointed out, it is logically inconsistent for Milgram to use the self-reported judgments of overly acquiescent ("destructively obedient") subjects to establish the ethical propriety o f his experiments. Similarly, Marshall and Zimbardo's (1979) subjects were chosen for their hypnotic suggestibility and would be expected to defer compliantly to the Costs of Deception Research experimenter's expertise. After all, if self-reports The costs o f deceptive research practices accrue to could be regarded as accurate measures o f the the participants, to the scientific enterprise, and to impact o f experimental conditions, we could dispense entirely with experimental manipulation and behavsociety. ioral measures, substituting instead vivid descriptions Harm Done to the Subject o f environmental stimuli to which subjects would A brief excerpt from an autobiographical account be instructed to report how they would act. Self-report questionnaires used to assess partico f a former secretary who typed my earlier articles illustrates the subtle but serious harm that can be ipants' reactions are tacked on as an afterthought done to, subjects by undermining their trust in their and generally lack psychometric sophistication. Subown judgment and in fiduciaries as well as the jects' self-reported gladness to be stressed and dereluctance many have to admit, even to themselves, ceived may be explained by a variety of psychological mechanisms in addition to deferential compliance that they have been duped. discussed above. These mechanisms include reducThis experiment [involving deceptive feedback about quality of performance relative to peers] confirmed my con- tion o f cognitive dissonance, identification with the aggressor, and masochistic obedience. It takes wellviction that standards were completely arbitrary . . . because the devastating blow was struck by a psychologist, trained clinical interviewers to uncover true feelings whose competence to judge behavior I had never doubted of anger, shame, or altered self-image in participants before. . . . It is not a matter of "belief" but of fact that who believe that what they say should conform with I found the experience devastating. their image of a "good subject." Ring, Wallston, and 168 February 1985 • American Psychologist This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Corey (1970), in their follow-up interview exploring subjective reactions to a Milgram-type obedience experiment, reported that many subjects stated that they were experiencing difficulty in trusting adult authorities. In a recently reported study of the effects of debriefing (Smith & Richardson, 1983), about 20% of 464 introductory psychology undergraduates reported experiencing harm. In the harm group, 61% had participated in a deception experiment as compared to 38% in the no-harm group. Students who had participated in deception experiments tended to perceive psychologists as less trustworthy than did nondeceived participants. Even subjects who deny other harmful effects do report decreased trust in social scientists following deception research. For example, citing instances of experimental deception: FiUenbaum (1966) found that deception led to increased suspiciousness (even though subjects tended not to act on their suspicions), and Keisner (197I) found that deceived and debriefed subjects were "less inclined to trust experimenters to tell the truth" (p. 7). Other authors (Silverman, Shulman, & Wiesenthal, 1970; Fine & Lindskold, 1971) have noted that deception decreases compliance with demand characteristics and increases negativisticbehavior. (In Wahl, 1972, p. 12) Decreased trust in fiduciaries then is a generally acknowledged cost of deception itself. Even if we choose to accept self-report data as veridical, 20% of subjects report such harm and the proportion is highest for deception research. From an ethical and legal perspective, harm is done to each individual. The harm the minority of subjects report they have suffered is not nullified by the majority of subjects who claim to have escaped unscathed, any more than the harm done victims of drunk drivers can be excused by the disproportionate number of pedestrians with sufficient alacrity to avoid being run over by them. From a rule-utilitarian perspective, the procedural issue concerns where the locus of control should rightly reside. The generally accepted principle of respect for self-determination dictates that the locus of control should reside with each participant. T h e subject, like the investigator, retains the right to decide whether the likely benefits to self and society outweigh the likely costs to self and society. The investigator is not privileged to weigh the costs to the subjects against the benefits to society. The principle of informed consent allows the subject to decide how to dispose of his or her person. The subject acting as sovereign agent may freely agree to incur risk, inconvenience, or pain. But a subject whose consent has been obtained by deceitful and fraudulent means has become an object for the investigator to manipulate. A subject can only regain February 1985 • American Psychologist sovereignty by claiming to have been a subject all along and not an object. Not surprisingly, subjects tend to affirm their agency by denying that they have allowed themselves to be treated as objects, and when queried by an experimenter, most will say that they were glad to have been subjects. Harm Done to the Profession The harm done by deception researchers accrues to the profession and to the larger society as well as to the individual. The scientific costs of deception in research are considerable. These costs include (a) exhausting the pool of naive subjects, (b) jeopardizing community support for the research enterprise, and (c) undermining the commitment to truth of the researchers themselves. The power of the scientific community is conferred by the larger community. Social support for behavioral science research is jeopardized when investigators promote parochial values that conflict with more universal principles of moral judgment and moral conduct. The use of the pursuit of truth to justify deceit risks the probable effect of undermining confidence in the scientific enterprise and in the credibility of those who engage in it. As a result of widespread use of deception, psychologists are suspected of being tricksters. Suspicious subjects may respond by role-playing the part they think the investigator expects, doing what they think the investigator wants them to do (Orne, 1962), or pretending to be naive. The practice of deceiving participants and of justifying such deception undermines the investigators' own integrity and commitment to truth. Short-term gains are traded for the cumulative costs of long-term deterioration of investigators' ethical sensibilities and integrity and damage to their credibility. Harm Done to Society The moral norm of reciprocity proscribing deceitful social relations both acknowledges and places a positive value on the fact that the elements of social reality are reciprocally determined. The inherent cost of behaving deceitfully in the research setting is to undermine trust in expert authorities. If conduct in the laboratory or natural setting cannot be isolated from conduct in daily life, the implications are farreaching. In a popular article entitled "Snoopology," John Jung (1975) discussed some probable effects of experimentation in real-life situations with persons who did not know they were serving as experimental subjects. These included increased self-consciousness in public places, broadening of the aura of mistrust and suspicion that pervades daily life, inconveniencing and irritating persons by contrived situations, and desensitizing individuals to the needs of others by "boy-who-cried-wolf" effects so that unusual 169 public events are suspected of being part of a research project. Truth telling and promise keeping serve the function in social relations that physical laws do in the natural world; these practices promote order and regularity in social relations, without which intentional actions would be very nearly impossible. By acting in accord with agreed-upon rules, keeping promises, acting honorably, and following the rules of the game, human beings construct for themselves a coherent consistent environment in which purposive behavior becomes possible. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Benefits of Deception Even if a simple cost-benefit calculus consistent with act-utilitarianism is adopted and we agree to weigh the costs to subjects against the benefits to humankind, we must still inquire as to what these benefits might be. Consideration of the benefits of a proposed investigation within the context of a cost-benefit ethical analysis requires more stringent standards for what constitutes scientifically and socially valid research than in a purely empirical context. I will argue that the scientific and social benefits of deception research cannot be established with sufficient certitude to tip the scale in favor of procedures that wrong subjects. The deception paradigms employed by experimental social psychologists do not and cannot deliver the reduction in ambiguity that could justify what would otherwise be regarded as ethically unacceptable research practices. Deceptive practices do not succeed in accomplishing the scientific objectives that are used to justify such deception, any better than methods that do not require deception. If the phenomenon being studied is socially important it can be studied in natural or clinical contexts that do not require laboratory manipulation to produce. If laboratory controls are required to create a counterfactual condition that exists nowhere, then in order to claim benefits, it must first be shown that the counterfactual conditions are possible to create in situ and that the common good would be enhanced by doing so. The claim is made that deceptive manipulations are required to create a psychological reality under experimental conditions that permit valid inference. This claim is based on two assumptions: (a) deceptive instructions create a uniform psychological reality; and (b) causal inference in the social sciences can be achieved with a high level of certitude. But neither of these assumptions has gone unchallenged by critics of experimental social psychological methods. Deception does not create a uniform psychological reality when subjects in an experiment differ in their level of naivet~ or in their responses to the possibility of experimental manipulation. It is now 170 common knowledge among many kinds of prospective subjects that deception is employed routinely in social psychological experiments. The tendency of some subjects to assign idiosyncratic meaning rather than to buy the experimenter's cover story, even when it is true, defeats the purpose of deceptive instructions, which is to control subject set. There is evidence that investigators untrained in phenomenological assessment methodology will fail to detect subject suspiciousness. Page (1973) has shown that asking subjects fewer than four questions will classify only 5% of subjects as suspicious, whereas extended questionnaires will yield about 40% suspicious subjects, and the behaviors of suspicious subjects in the experimental situation are generally found to differ from those who are not. Referring to laboratory research, Seeman (1969) concluded, "In view of the frequency with which deception is used in research we may soon be reaching a point where we no longer have naive subjects, but only naive experimenters" (p. 1026). The traditional experimental social psychologist justifies deception research on the logical positivist presupposition that laboratory observations could provide unassailable knowledge if only we were able to produce a uniform psychological reality and do away with error variance. The objective of the traditional social psychology experiment is to enable the experimenter to infer unambiguously the existence and direction of causal relations by ruling out alternative causal explanations. Controls requiring deceptive instructions are introduced with the implicit expectation that their use can provide such unassailable knowledge. But the claim that observations can provide value-free, objective knowledge has been challenged by philosophers and scientists at least since Heisenberg's (1958) principle was enunciated. From the perspective of their critics, experimental controls distort by controlling the phenomena the investigator is attempting to explain. The meaning subjects assign to a situation depends upon the characteristics of that situation, as well as upon subject characteristics. A psychological mechanism observed to operate under one set of experimental conditions often fails to replicate under a somewhat different set of experimental conditions because the meaning persons give a situation is contextual and purposive and dependent upon factors that the experimenter may not even be aware of, such as the strangeness of the situation from the perspective of the subject. Typically the conjunction of events in a laboratory situation is atypical, and the effect of constraining the options a subject has is itself a factor that distorts the responses given and the behavior observed. Whereas laboratory methods construct situations and contexts for persons and then assess how they respond to these extrinsicially February 1985 • American Psychologist This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. constructed situations, persons in their natural settings typically construct or select their own social worlds among the options available. Bronfenbrenner (1977) called for an ecological perspective in developmental and social research precisely because he disputed the possibility that subjects could assign the same meaning to their behavior in the natural setting as they did in the highly artificial laboratory setting. Thus, it can be argued that laboratory conditions create the very ambiguity they are intended to dispel. For example, Gardner (1978) could not replicate Glass and Singer's (1972) findings of negative aftereffects of noise when subjects knew that they had the option of discontinuing participation. Assurance Of freedom to withdraw removed the effect of the noise stressor. If Glass and Singer intended to study the negative aftereffects of noise per se, their experimental manipulation was inappropriate. If, on the other hand, they intended to study the effects of inescapable noise, their experimental situation was highly relevant, but clearly violated participants' right to withdraw. Similarly, the experimental condition created by Milgram in his studies of "destructive obedience" exemplifies a highly ambiguous control that seriously compromises the generalizability of his findings. Because subjects were paid for their participation and recruited on that basis, obedience in Milgram's setting for some subjects might have reflected a sense of fair play and employee loyalty rather than, as for other subjects, shocking obedience. Moreover, Milgram's experimental directives were incongruous and bizarre, thus confusing and distressing the subject. Furthermore, the experimenter's orders were legitimized by the laboratory setting, thus permitting subjects to resolve their sense of incongruity by trusting the good will of the investigator toward both subject and confederate. Far from illuminating real life, as he claimed, Milgram in fact appeared to have constructed a set of conditions so internally inconsistent that they could not occur in real life. His application of his results to destructive obedience in military settings or Nazi Germany (Milgram, 1974) is metaphoric rather than scientific. Not only was the situation artificial in Milgram's experiment, but all the necessary data were provided by the graduate student confederates who demonstrated conclusively by obeying Milgram's instructions to inflict suffering upon the subjects that normal, well-intentioned people will hurt others who are innocent. The confederates justified their actions on the same bases as the subjects justified theirs, that they were inflicting no real harm. Because subjects' motives could not unambiguously be called destructive obedience and the behavior of his graduate student confederates could, Milgram's deceitful February 1985 ° American Psychologist manipulation was neither necessary nor could it permit valid inference to the real-life situations to which Milgram generalized his results. Defenders of laboratory manipulations have attempted to rebut the criticism that laboratory experiments lack external validity and therefore do not produce knowledge of benefit to society that could justify misinforming subjects. Berkowitz and Donnerstein (1982) argued that laboratory experiments are oriented mainly toward testing causal hypotheses concerning mediational processes and are not carried out to determine the probability that a certain event will occur in a particular population. They claimed that, in theoretically oriented investigations, the specific manipulations and measures are merely arbitrary operational definitions of general theoretical constructs and the subject sample is merely an arbitrary group from the general universe of all humans to which the hypothesis is assumed to apply. We have now come to our central thesis: The meaning the subjects assign to the situation they are in and the behavior they are carrying out plays a greater part in determining the generalizabilityof an experiment's outcome than does the sample's demographic representativenessor the setting's surface realism. (Berkowitz & Donnerstein, 1982, p. 249) But if the specific operations were interchangeable as Berkowitz and Donnerstein claimed, the context and subject populations could be altered without changing the results. However, failure to replicate social psychological findings when probed by a critical investigator is more the rule than the exception in social psychology, and the failure to replicate can seldom be attributed unambiguously to a controlled change in experimental conditions. Results do not survive even minor changes in the experimental conditions, such as notifying subjects that they may withdraw from an experiment. Therefore, Berkowitz and Donnerstein were incorrect in claiming that the specific operations typically employed in social psychological experiments are interchangeable. In the event that the variables that are untied and independently manipulated in the laboratory setting are necessarily or typically confounded in the natural setting, conditions in the laboratory cannot or will not be replicable. Psychological processes do not occur in a psychosocial vacuum. When the task, variables, and setting can have no real-world counterparts, the processes dissected in the laboratory also cannot operate in the real world. In that case, deceptive research practices cannot be justified by their benefits to science and society. Furthermore, deceptive practices cannot be justified unless they result in findings that are controversial because the benefit to society of noncontroversial, that is, trivial, findings is minimal. Berkowitz 171 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. and Donnerstein markedly attenuated the importance of causal hypotheses by claiming that experimenters ask only, c a n "alterations in Variable X lead to changes in Variable Y?" This is generally a trivial question because we almost always know prior to conducting the experiment that the answer is yes. Generally, the phenomenon has already been shown to occur in real life. For example, did Zimbardo and his colleagues (1981) really need to induce partial deafness through posthypnotic suggestion to confirm what is a generally acknowledged clinical observation that unexplained deafness in older people induces suspiciousness? The mechanistic model of development implied by experimental social psychological procedures is not really applicable to social psychological phenomena. If the Cartesian, mechanistic world view is insufficient to explain the physical world, then it is certainly not adequate to explain biosocial and psychosocial phenomena. If physical reality is subject to indeterminacy introduced by the observer, as Heisenberg (1958) assured us it is, how much more true is this of human behavior? The level of complexity of social phenomena and the implausibility of treating human beings as interchangeable or even as identical with themselves over time sharply limit the level of certitude that can accompany any empirical generaliTation in the sociobehavioral sciences. A little ingenuity may well yield fruitful alternatives to deception (see Geller, 1982, for a systematic review of such alternatives). If a phenomenon is socially significant it can frequently be observed in situ, making experimental manipulation unnecessary, Alternatively, experimenters could act as subjects in their own experiments and employ introspection. Aggression can certainly be studied in situ. Aggression researchers can study acts intended to harm others in such naturalistic situations as organized sports, which vary along relevant parameters such as rules and normative expectations. Investigators interested in studying how people justify intentionally causing others to suffer in real life have the option of introspective examination of their own behavior as participants in the research process. Thus, in lieu of the familiar teacher-learner aggression paradigm (Berkowitz & Geen, 1966) in which a confederate makes a series of preplanned errors on a wordassociation task and subjects deliver shocks to the confederate, investigators and their confederates could introspect. It turns out that subjects believe that they are benefiting the learner and therefore are not behaving aggressively in the sense of intending to inflict harm (Kane, Joseph, & Tedeschi, 1976). Experimenters and their confederates argue just as research subjects do that their motives in inflicting emotionally painful discomfort are altruistic or justified by role expectations, even though an objective 172 observer might regard the behavior of confederates and subjects as equally aggressive. For example, Milgram justified his deceptive procedure by suggesting that many subjects were grateful for the insight into their own destructively obedient tendencies that the experiment and debriefing afforded. Investigators could also study retaliative aggression without using deception by introducing certain nondeceptive experimental conditions in which they acted as real, rather than confederate, subjects. Immediately after the usual perfunctory debriefing in deception research, subjects would be instructed to demonstrate behaviorally how they feel about their participation by delivering 0 to 20 mild but genuine electric shocks to the forearm of the experimenter who designed the research. In addition to providing data on subjects' response to deception and some data on retaliative aggression, this aversive reinforcement coda might have the added advantage of rendering superfluous any need for extrinsically imposed codes mandating ethical practices in the conduct of research with human participants. The suggestion that psychologists serve as their own subjects and introspect was made before me by the investigators whose work Marshall and Zimbardo (1979) failed to replicate: In these days of ethical guidelines and human subjects committees, this may very well be the end of the matter, for it is unlikely that anyone will do experiments such as ours or Marshall and Zimbardo's for quite a while, if ever again. On the particular issue at stake, however, this is probably of little moment, for this is one issue on which the readers can serve as their own subjects. If they will do a thorough introspective job after convincing a physician to inject them with .5 cc of a 1:1000 solution of epinephrine, they can decide which of us is right. (Schachter & Singer, 1979, p. 995) Debriefing Effective debriefing does not nullify the wrong done participants by deceiving them and may not even repair their damaged self-image or ability to trust adult authorities. Subjects did, after all, commit acts that they believed at the time could be harmful to others, and they were in fact, entrapped into committing those acts by an authority whom they had reason to trust. And if the participants (subjects and confederates) are students, they have, in fact, been provided with a model of behavior in which scientific ends are used to justify deceitful means. However, if an investigator does elect to use deception, he or she must include an effective debriefing procedure in order to reduce the long-range costs of deception and offer partial reparation to subjects. Sieber (1983) offered carefully considered recommendations for debriefing when deception is used. She argued convincingly that deceptive debriefFebruary 1985 • American Psychologist This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. ing is especially u n e t h i c a l a n d t h a t debriefing in • of deception. IRB: A Review of Human Subjects Research, •(6), 1-4. d e c e p t i o n research s h o u l d b e u n d e r t a k e n o n l y b y a Berkowitz, L., & Donnerstein, E. (1982). External validity is more skilled a n d s y m p a t h e t i c professional, o r it m a y d o than skin deep: Some answers to criticisms of laboratory m o r e h a r m t h a n good. F o r e x a m p l e , Mills (1976) experiments. American Psychologist, 37, 245-257. p r e s e n t e d in detail a debriefing s c e n a r i o t h a t he Berkowitz, L., & Geen, R. G. (1966). Film violence and the cue properties of available targets. Journal of Personality and Social developed over 20 years o f debriefing, a n d t h a t Psychology, 3, 525-530. provides the p a r t i c i p a n t with a n e d u c a t i o n a l expeBlaekstone, W. (1941). 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Journal of Personidity and Social Psychology, 37, 591-601. Zimbardo, P. G., Andersen, S. M., & Kabat, L. G. (1981, June). Induced hearing deficit generates experimental paranoia. Science, 212, 1529-1531. F e b r u a r y 1985 • A m e r i c a n Psychologist 534987 research-article2014 JIVXXX10.1177/0886260514534987Journal of Interpersonal ViolenceCheit Article Research Ethics and Case Studies in Psychology: A Commentary on Taus v. Loftus Journal of Interpersonal Violence 2014, Vol. 29(18) 3290­–3307 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0886260514534987 jiv.sagepub.com Ross E. Cheit1 Abstract Loftus and Guyer have been criticized for the methods they employed in investigating an anonymous case study published by Corwin and Olafson. This article examines the ethical dimensions of their investigation. Loftus and Guyer have offered three defenses for their actions. All three of those defenses lack merit. Their investigation did not constitute oral history because it failed to comport with the basic requirements of that practice. Their investigation did not constitute ethical journalism because of the unjustified use of anonymous sources and the clear violation of basic fairness. Their investigation did not constitute justified medical research because of a failure to analyze or weigh the harms against the benefits. Their methods also violated ethical principles for psychologists, including the rule against activities that could reasonably be expected to impair the psychologist’s objectivity. This case demonstrates that there is no ethical way to investigate a clinical case, without the patient’s approval, that is both comprehensive enough to provide strong scholarship and yet respectful enough of privacy and medical confidentiality to honor important professional norms. Keywords Taus v. Loftus, case studies, ethics, confidentiality, objectivity 1Brown University, Providence, RI, USA Corresponding Author: Ross E. Cheit, A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, Brown University, Campus Box 1977, Providence, RI 02912, USA. Email: rc@brown.edu Cheit 3291 Nicole Taus feels violated. She was the subject of a published case study involving memory and child abuse, and she agreed to allow a videotape of two interviews of her—one conducted in 1984 when she was 6 years and the other in 1995 when she was 17 years—to be shown to educational audiences without any identifying features. Corwin and Olafson (1997) presented the case in a professional journal, where five others were invited to provide commentary. Identified in print only as Jane Doe, Taus’s case became part of a lively debate over recovered memory, largely because of those two interviews. The following year, however, Taus found out that a private investigator was making inquiries about her in her hometown. She later learned that the investigator had been hired by a prominent psychology professor, Elizabeth Loftus, who also befriended Nicole Taus’s estranged mother—the woman who had been found to have physically and sexually abused Nicole as a child. Loftus eventually wrote a two-part article in a popular magazine with Melvin Guyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, which was titled “Who Abused Jane Doe?” and argued that the mother’s side of the story called Corwin and Olafson’s interpretation of the case into doubt. They asserted that Jane Doe probably had not been abused at all, and if she was, it was probably by her now-deceased father. Loftus and Guyer (2002a) did not use Taus’s actual name, but it is not difficult to understand out why she experienced both the article and Loftus and Guyer’s investigative methods as invasive, harmful, and unfair. The complexity of this case poses major challenges to anyone seeking to analyze it. One of those challenges is disentangling ethical concerns from regulatory and constitutional ones. All three exist in this case, but because there have been formal proceedings in the regulatory and legal contexts, those two frameworks have come to define the case. The regulatory issues involve the relevance and application of federal rules about human subjects research, which are overseen by institutional review boards (IRBs). IRBs might see themselves as guardians of ethics; their existence is justified in ethical terms. But the justification for IRBs is hotly contested and some have argued that they are unconstitutional infringements on free speech (Hamburger, 2005; Tierney & Corwin, 2007). There are also conflicting accounts of exactly what transpired at the IRB at Loftus and Guyer’s respective institutions. Loftus appears to have avoided sanctions in connection with this case on the grounds that she was not conducting “research” as that term is defined by relevant regulations. Such a decision would not involve “exoneration,” as it has often been characterized, so much as a lack of jurisdiction. It has been reported that Loftus was instructed not to contact Nicole Taus’s mother again without permission from the IRB and told “she should take an ethics class” (Shea, 2003). Moreover, Tavris (2002) reported that 3292 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 29(18) two of the three IRB committee members at the University of Washington recommended that Loftus be reprimanded but that a dean overturned that recommendation. What happened at the University of Michigan is also unclear because the relevant documents that would clarify that issue are confidential. Although some of those documents have been quoted selectively by Tavris (2002), none have been released by the parties who claim to have been treated unfairly, and a faculty member at Michigan who was involved in the case has taken issue with how Tavris and Guyer have characterized the matter (Berent, 2002). The constitutional issue in the case is whether the First Amendment protects Loftus and others against civil damages related to invasion of privacy, which Taus alleged in a lawsuit that reached the California Supreme Court (and made her real name public for the first time) before it was settled. The Supreme Court’s decision that the First Amendment trumped all but one of the torts alleged by Taus says nothing about the ethics of any of those actions (Taus v. Loftus, 2007). The First Amendment protects a vast array of objectionable and unethical behavior. It even protects dubious and biased research—against civil claims for monetary damages. That does not mean that we should celebrate such work. Moreover, it is only because of how the court interpreted the application of California’s anti-SLAPP suit provisions1 that Taus was put in the bizarre position of having one of her causes of action sustained by the California Supreme Court while being told at the same time that she had to pay several hundred thousand dollars in attorneys fees to the defendants for the ones that were dismissed. Under those conditions, Taus could not afford to keep litigating. Accordingly, she settled the single remaining cause of action, which, if litigated, would have provided direct testimony about the alleged trickery that was used to obtain information. Two general questions motivate the analysis that follows. First, when, if ever, is it acceptable for an academic psychologist to pierce the veil of confidentiality in an anonymous case in the psychology literature for the purposes of research? Second, if such an inquiry is justified, what are the ethical issues involved in such research? Those questions will be considered after clarifying the behavior at issue and considering the justifications that Loftus and Guyer offered in their article for those actions. Clarifying the Behavior Loftus and Guyer (2002b) argue in “Who Abused Jane Doe? The Hazards of the Single Case History, Part II” that critics of their investigation were challenging their right to “track down information, reassess the evidence and claims, and come to a different conclusion than Corwin’s” (p. 39). But Cheit 3293 nothing that has been written about this case challenges the reassessment of evidence and claims, or the right of others to “come to a different conclusion.” The original publication in which Jane Doe’s case appeared provided the opportunity for various commentators to do just that: reassess the evidence and claims and reach their own conclusions. The concerns raised by Nicole Taus are all related to “tracking down information.” That innocuous phrase stands in for activities that were not fully disclosed by Loftus and Guyer in their article. Instead, they were, at times, more poetic than specific in describing the nature of their inquiry. By their account, they “set out on an odyssey to learn more about the case” (Loftus & Guyer, 2002a, p. 29). What was involved in that “odyssey”? The authors were fairly specific about the first step: “After a long and tedious search of the social security death records and newspaper obituaries, we found out who [Nicole’s father] was” (Loftus & Guyer, 2002a, p. 29). Beyond that, however, these scientists were surprisingly vague about their methods. As Loftus and Guyer (2002b) put it, “We tracked down many documents pertinent to [Nicole’s] case and met a few individuals who knew her” (p. 40). What was actually involved in “tracking down” those documents and how they came to have “met” a “few individuals” was not spelled out. Those actions are at the heart of any ethical analysis of the research methods in this case. Two actions are particularly noteworthy in this case. First, Loftus engaged the services of two private investigators to figure out Jane Doe’s identity, to obtain court records and other documents, and to locate key people in Jane Doe’s family. How, exactly, the investigators accomplished those tasks was contested in the civil suit, and it was never resolved through a full adjudication. The California Court of Appeals thought there was sufficient reason to think that some of the court records that Loftus obtained might have been obtained through trickery that they would have allowed the suit to proceed (Taus v. Loftus, 2005). Even the California Supreme Court, which dismissed those counts, ruled that the allegations concerning misrepresentations by Loftus herself were not immunized by the First Amendment against the possibility of civil damages (Taus v. Loftus, 2007). Loftus used private investigators for more than just identifying Nicole Taus and locating documents pertaining to her legal status as a child. She also used one of them as an intermediary who actually conducted an unspecified number of interviews. For scientists, of course, it is a well-accepted norm that assistants should always be appropriately credited for their work. In this case, however, the assistant’s name and occupation was not disclosed by the authors. Second, Loftus did more than investigate this family. She intervened in a personal manner, insinuating herself into the lives of people around Nicole 3294 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 29(18) Taus, particularly her estranged mother, who had been adjudicated to have been abusive years ago. Loftus has since acknowledged that she befriended the woman and that she secretly hoped she could reunite Nicole Taus and her mother. Three Proffered Defenses Were the actions in this case justified in ethical terms? Loftus and Guyer have offered three different defenses of their actions, each of which is examined below. Oral History Through their lawyers, Loftus and Guyer argued at the California Court of Appeals that they were doing nothing more than “oral history interviewing” (Opening Brief of Appellants, Taus v. Loftus, 2004, p. 37). Oral history is an accepted practice and nobody questions the ethics of doing oral histories in general. But the claim that Loftus and Guyer were engaged in oral history cannot be squared with the Principles and Best Practices for Oral History, which clearly express that oral history begins with an audio or video recording of a first person account made by an interviewer with an interviewee (also referred to as narrator), both of whom have the conscious intention of creating a permanent record to contribute to an understanding of the past. A verbal document, the oral history, results from this process and is preserved and made available in different forms to other users, researchers, and the public. (Oral History Association, 2009) It is not clear which of the interviews conducted by Loftus and her private investigator were taped in the first instance, and how many of those recordings have been preserved. Carol Tavris has written that the interview with the foster mother was not taped (Tavris, 2002). Moreover, Loftus and Guyer have not made any of these interviews available to “to other users, researchers, and the public.” To the contrary, they did not even include these interviews in the references section of their article, leaving the reader without any of the markers that come with a standard academic citation. Journalism Loftus and Guyer have also invoked journalism as a defense. In an appellate brief, they argued that “their actions are no different from those of reporters Cheit 3295 who use routine reporting techniques to discover information” (Opening Brief of Appellants 2004, p. 34). Similarly, Carol Tavris (2002) has cast the case in terms of Loftus and Guyer’s “right to do what good reporters do every day” (p. 41). But these claims are impossible to square with various statements of journalistic ethics. There are two significant ways in which the Loftus and Guyer’s article violated basic principles of journalistic ethics. Unjustified use of anonymous sources. Journalistic codes of ethics are clear that anonymous sources are to be disfavored. “We should identify sources as completely as possible,” states the “Los Angeles Times Ethics Guidelines” (2011). Those guidelines state further that “An unnamed source should have a compelling reason for insisting on anonymity, such as fear of retaliation, and we should state those reasons when they are relevant.” The Guidelines also say, “The reporter and editor must be satisfied that the source has a sound factual basis for his or her assertions. Some sources quoted anonymously might tend to exaggerate or overreach precisely because they will not be named.” Loftus and Guyer violated these norms repeatedly by providing anonymity to three different professionals in their article without any statement about the reasons why. Given the obvious concern that anonymous sources might have an axe to grind, one wonders why Loftus and Guyer did not identify Dr. S., the clinical psychologist who they assert was the most important person in the case. Without identifying information, the reader has no way to assess whether this psychologist might have an established bias or some history of professional misconduct that would speak to their qualifications and credibility. Loftus and Guyer also did not identify the former emergency room nurse. In neither case did the authors provide a reason for not disclosing the identity of these professionals. The most glaring violation of journalistic norms about anonymous sources involves the private investigator whom Loftus hired. He appears to have played a critical role in the most important interview that the authors conducted—the one with the mother, who had been found to have abused Nicole in the 1980s. According to Loftus and Guyer (2002a), When he explained why he was there, Mom welcomed him sobbing her way through his interview, saying, “I never thought this day would come.” (p. 30) Loftus and Guyer refer to him as “our assistant.” It was revealed through Taus v. Loftus that the assistant was actually a private investigator named Harvey Shapiro. There are two reasons that Shapiro should have been identified by name. First, that is the only way to allow the reader to make any 3296 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 29(18) independent assessment of the source. As the New York Times’ Confidential News Source Policy explains, When we use such sources, we accept an obligation not only to convince a reader of their reliability but also to convey what we can learn of their motivation—as much as we can supply to let a reader know whether the sources have a clear point of view on the issue under discussion. (New York Times, 2012) Harvey Shapiro’s business—which can be found through www.theinnocenceteam.com, formerly www.accused.com—specializes in representing people charged with sex crimes. His business plan involves “a clear point of view” about sex crimes—he takes the defendant’s view. The other reason that Harvey Shapiro should have been identified is that he conducted perhaps the most important interview in their investigation—the first interview with the mother. He paved the way for the later interview by Loftus and Guyer. This process has not been scrutinized. Why would a statement by Shapiro that simply explained “why he was there” cause the mother to sob with joy and relief? It must have been something quite sympathetic to the woman he had not yet interviewed. This is not the only fishy thing about the role of this private investigator in this case.2 Shapiro’s role is also central to the one cause of action that was left in place by the Supreme Court because, according to Cantrell’s declaration, he told her that Loftus worked with Corwin. Cantrell’s declaration concerning the misrepresentations that induced her to allow Loftus to interview her in the first place was held sufficient to state a prima facie case for invasion of privacy, sufficient to defeat the antiSLAPP motion. Loftus flatly denied the allegations of misrepresentation, but that is what would have been tried if the case had not settled. Violation of basic fairness. Journalistic codes of ethics are also clear that it violates basic tenets of fairness to write a story about someone without providing them an opportunity to respond. For example, the “Los Angeles Times Ethics Guidelines” (2011) state as follows: People who will be shown in an adverse light in an article must be given a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves. This means making a good-faith effort to give the subject of allegations or criticism sufficient time and information to respond substantively. The Associated Press Statement of News Values and Principles also states this obligation in mandatory terms: “Whenever we portray someone in Cheit 3297 a negative light, we must make a real effort to obtain a response from that person” (Associated Press, n.d., para. 9). There is no question that Loftus cast Nicole Taus in an adverse light, particularly by mentioning juvenile court proceedings that occurred years after the contested events in 1984. Loftus and Guyer stated two reasons for not contacting Nicole Taus. One of those explanations contradicts the fundamental basis of journalism: seeking as much information as possible and keeping an open mind. As the “Los Angeles Times Ethics Guidelines” (2011) puts it, “Reporters should try genuinely to understand all points of view.” Further, “We seek out intelligent, articulate views from all perspectives” (“Los Angeles Times Ethics Guidelines,” 2011, Fairness section, para. 2). In dramatic contrast to that conception, Loftus and Guyer (2002b) assert that “Jane’s own account at this point might well not shed additional light” (p. 40). Professional journalists would never spurn an interview with a key subject because they guessed that the person “might well not shed additional light.” Their second reason for not providing Nicole Taus with a voice is couched in terms of ethics. As Loftus and Guyer (2002b) put it, “We worried that such contact might be upsetting to Jane” (p. 41). Avoiding the harm that could occur by intruding into the life of someone who thought her case was anonymous might well be sufficient reason for deciding against embarking on the project. But Loftus and Guyer did not state their concern about possible “upset” in terms of deciding whether or not to investigate her life. They were already planning to publish an article filled with private information about her. Their question was apparently whether or not to give Nicole Taus the opportunity to respond, and whether the harm that they were already willing to cause would be made even worse if they contacted her. For reasons they did not articulate, they made the judgment that Taus would somehow be less upset if they did not provide her with a meaningful opportunity to speak than if they did. They did not, in other words, respect her privacy or her autonomy. An Analogy to Medical Research Loftus and Guyer also reported in their article that they consulted with Thomas McCormick, a physician with expertise in medical ethics. One wonders why two prominent psychologists would not seek the advice of someone in psychology. Whatever the reason, the medical ethicist they consulted apparently offered . . . a hypothetical situation in which a professional has published a case history claiming that he cured cancer using marijuana leaves and Crisco. Oncologists would naturally have many questions about this case study: Did it really work? 3298 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 29(18) If the patient seems to be in better health after the “treatment,” did he or she really have cancer in the first place? Would it be ethical for a physician to talk to the “case history” and to examine the original doctor’s data? McCormick thinks so, and so do we. (Loftus & Guyer, 2002b, p. 40) Presumably, the reader is supposed to find that hypothetical example to be so close to the case at hand that the medical ethicist’s view would carry over as well. But there are many obvious differences between that hypothetical example and the case at hand. First, the hypothetical example is about allegedly saving someone’s life with a treatment. In other words, the implications of the underlying facts of the case could have life-or-death consequences to many other people. That is not true of the case at hand. The case presented by Corwin and Olafson does not counsel any kind of treatment or standard of care for anyone. Accordingly, there was all the more reason to protect the subject’s privacy. Second, the question in the hypothetical example is phrased, awkwardly, in terms of whether it is ethical “for a physician to talk to the ‘case history,’” which presumably includes talking to the subject of the case history. Yet, that is precisely what Loftus and Guyer did not do in this case. They talked to people around the subject of the case study, including people not mentioned in any way in the (anonymous) case. Third, the hypothetical does not involve a 11-year delay between the underlying events and the later “investigation.” It would be more relevant to ask whether it would be ethical for a physician to use a private investigator to track down family members who were never mentioned in a published but anonymous case study and contact them out of the blue with questions about intimate events that occurred more than 10 years ago. My guess is that no ethics expert in medicine or psychology would provide a simple “yes” in response. Loftus and Guyer’s own ethics consultant is clear that “respect for autonomy of the patient” and “avoiding harm” are the first two principles in cases across a range of issues in health care ethics (McCormick, 2010, p. 1188). But Loftus and Guyer ignored Nicole Taus’s autonomy in deciding she would be less “upset” if they wrote this article without talking to her. As for avoiding harm, Loftus and Guyer (2002b) mention the concept only once in their article, when they state that the kind of inquiry they conducted is justified “as long as this can be accomplished without undue harm” (p. 40). But the authors did not follow that critical sentence up with any description or analysis of the harms in this case. We are left unsure whether the authors recognize that there were harms, and if they did, why they came to the conclusion that the harms were not “undue.” Nicole Taus’s essay in this issue certainly makes it clear that there were harms. Those were short term and immediate. There are also Cheit 3299 important long-term harms to consider if this kind of invasion into an anonymous case is considered acceptable by the profession. Loftus and Guyer’s view seems to be that their work is so important that the harms—which are left unacknowledged—are definitely worth it. Of course, deciding whether the benefits of one’s own work are worth the harm to others is tricky business. The researcher is likely to undervalue the harms and overvalue the benefits of his or her own work. And that appears to be exactly what Loftus and Guyer did. First, they did not take into account the possible harms in this case. Second, their account of the benefits gives far greater importance to this case than it had in the real world. This was hardly the first corroborated case of recovered memory. The Recovered Memory Project at Brown University contains an archive of over 100 corroborated cases of recovered memory (www.recoveredmemory.org). Nicole Taus’s case had particular power because it involved videotape, but the idea that the case was being offered as definitive proof of recovered memory is contradicted by the title of the article, “Videotaped Discovery of a Reportedly Unrecallable Memory of Child Sexual Abuse.” Acknowledging that the discovery was “reportedly [emphasis added] unrecallable” highlights one of the inherent limits of any case study of this nature (Corwin & Olafson, 1997). The content of Corwin and Olafson’s presentation also contradicts any notion that they offered the case as some kind of gold standard proof of repressed memory. Corwin and Olafson (1997) left open the following questions: “Was Jane Doe’s memory truly unavailable, or was it just that she had never specifically tried to recall sexual abuse?” (pp. 110-111). Moreover, the case was published in a professional journal that included one commentary that took a completely different view of the case (Neisser, 1997). From the moment of original publication, then, this case was presented in qualified terms. That is appropriate to the presentation of case studies. These facts contradict the claim that this case was held out as some kind of ultimate proof about recovered memory. Respecting Confidentiality and Privacy Returning to the two larger questions that motivated this comment: When is it acceptable for a research psychologist to pierce the veil of confidentiality in an anonymous case in the published literature for the purposes of research? Second, if such an inquiry is justified, what are the ethical issues involved in such research? Loftus and Guyer (2002a) point out various instances in which case studies have later been seen in a very different light as a result of some kind of investigation independent of the author of the original case study. Most 3300 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 29(18) famously, Freud’s case studies have been reanalyzed in various ways. Similarly, Cornelia’s account of Sybil has been challenged by later analyses. Also, John Money’s case study of a male infant who received sex reassignment surgery was used for years as evidence that sexual identity was social, not biological. But Loftus and Guyer described these cases with a passive voice that obscures how they later came to light. For example, they describe the dramatic follow-up on Money’s case as follows: “Subsequent investigation revealed that the particular boy, David Reimer, never adjusted well and reverted to life as a male” (Loftus & Guyer, 2002a, p. 25). But this case was not unmasked by someone employing a private investigator and investigating the man’s life without his approval. The investigation was conducted through, and with the approval of, his treating psychiatrist. The more famous cases (Freud’s patients, Wilbur’s “Sybil”) involve archives of clinical papers, not explorations by private investigators. None of the cases that they cited as precedent for their work involved the kind of invasion of privacy that existed in Nicole Taus’s case. Official Cases Versus Clinical Cases In assessing the question about piercing the veil of confidentiality, there is a major distinction between “cases” in official government forums and “cases” of a purely clinical nature. Obviously, some cases, including Nicole Taus’s, are in both categories. But the distinction is nevertheless useful for the position that I propose: It is never acceptable for a psychologist to seek to identify and research the subject of an anonymous clinical case. If clinical materials have been archived, then those materials are obviously appropriate to examine. But seeking to identify a clinical patient to independently evaluate a published clinical case report is overly intrusive. Consider Kaplan and Manicavasagar (2001) who presented three case studies in support of “false memory syndrome.” One involved a 40-year-old woman, the third of five children, who suffered from panic attacks and, through therapy, eventually came to believe that she had been sexually molested by her father. The woman eventually was referred to one of the authors (V. M.), who reported that the patient’s belief that she had been sexually abused “progressively withered away” (Kaplan & Manicavasagar, 2001, p. 345). The authors cite “the closeness of the family,” as attested to by the woman’s sister, as one of the reasons it is unlikely that the molestations occurred (Kaplan & Manicavasagar, 2001, p. 345) This case involves the same controversial subjects as Nicole Taus’s case. But that alone would not, in my view, justify engaging a private investigator to try to identify the woman and then track down other members of her family to investigate the details contained in the authors’ report. Cheit 3301 There are two basic reasons in support of this position. First, the expectation of privacy is strongest when one’s case has never been in any kind of official forum. The mental health treatment relationship is built on confidentiality. That value is undercut if third-party research psychologists can ignore what first-party treating psychologists are duty-bound to protect. This standard asks more of psychologists than it does of journalists. A tabloid newspaper might be well within the protections of the First Amendment if it staked out a therapist’s office and published stories that identified and embarrassed patients. But those stories would not have the voice of authority that comes with being a member of a profession unless they quoted a psychologist. In this way, the ethical psychologist is held to a higher standard than the National Inquirer. And that is one of the reasons why the word of the professional psychologist carries more weight. The implication of this distinction between clinical and official cases is that archival research about cases that occurred in official proceedings is acceptable even if those proceedings were confidential, and even if, as in this case, the published case study is from a clinical setting. There were official records in this case from divorce proceedings and child protective service (CPS) investigations. Many of those documents were either sealed or marked confidential. But those designations should not be used to determine the ethical boundaries of scholarly inquiry. First, official designations can be overly broad. Second, what matters most is whether the purpose of the confidentiality is honored by the researcher. The primary reason for confidentiality in cases involving child sexual abuse is to protect the identities of children from public disclosure. It is ethically acceptable, then, to research a confidential case of that nature so long as the researcher also protects the identity of the child. To their credit, Loftus and Guyer did that in this case. But the ethical obligations concerning confidential information go further. The researcher who accesses confidential court documents has an ethical obligation to limit any published information to relevant facts. In the case at hand, the potentially relevant documents would be those related to the years when the abuse allegations were evaluated and litigated. But Loftus and Guyer went much further. They used confidential information from Nicole Taus’s juvenile court records in an apparent effort to impugn Taus’s character. That had nothing to do with arguments about who abused Jane Doe years earlier. Lacking sufficient relevance to the issues in the case, publishing information that impugns someone’s character but does not actually speak to the issues in the case is unethical. The same applies to Loftus and Guyer’s decision to inform their readers that the stepmother, who rejects their interpretation of this case completely, had once been arrested for vandalism, although the charges were dropped (Loftus & Guyer, 2002a). 3302 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 29(18) Archival Research Versus Interviewing While the acceptable scope of potential research in the realm of official proceedings is quite permissive, it is similarly restrictive on the issue of interviewing parties to a case that was presented anonymously. There is a world of difference between examining all of the documentary evidence available in the case and tracking down people years later and talking to them about those events. One major difference involves the nature of the intrusion into private lives that have a reasonable expectation of privacy—that is, research subjects who have been involved in research where their identity was protected well. Writing an article based on original archival research, which was part of Loftus and Guyer’s effort, is not significantly different from writing one based solely on the materials that were available at the time. In the case of original research, the research subject would know that the researchers had figured out his or her identity in order to conduct the research. But when the research is restricted to archival research, the research process itself is completely separate from the life of the research subject. Interviews are entirely different. Interviewing people years after the fact about family dynamics in a dysfunctional family is bound to have a serious effect on contemporaneous interpersonal relationships. Psychologists are supposed to share the same imperative that doctors have to avoid doing harm above all else. That would seem to counsel against intruding in families to conduct interviews about sexual abuse allegations years after they have been resolved in the courts. This distinction preserves the important ability to reassess cases in the literature. Reassessment can be accomplished with the case material alone. A good example is the commentary on Corwin’s and Olafson’s original presentation of the case. Reassessment might even include original research into additional documentary evidence from the case. But there is a difference between reassessing and relitigating a case. What Loftus and Guyer did went beyond reassessing existing evidence. They conducted interviews that have not been made available to others and then relied on them to reinterpret the case. By all appearances, their effort was closer to advocacy work for the defense. The nature of Loftus’s activity in this case went far beyond interviewing and advocating. Loftus admitted “befriending” Nicole Taus’s biological mother (Kelleher, 2003). She did not disclose that fact in the Skeptical Inquirer article about the case, let alone address the conflict between her friendship and her capacity and willingness to research the case in an objective fashion. That concern is magnified by the fact that this was not just a simple friendship; it was a friendship with an agenda. Loftus told Kelleher (2003) that “she was motivated in large part by a desire to unite the mother Cheit 3303 and daughter.” Whether a research psychologist without any clinical experience or training should ever intervene in a family with such intentions is a question worth considering. For the purposes of this commentary, however, the more important question is why Loftus did not disclose this friendship in her article about the case. The woman she “befriended” is the most important character in the claim that Corwin and Olafson’s account of the case is wrong. As Loftus’s interpretation might be the product of her friendship and other ulterior motives, this “evidence” is questionable at best. This blurring of professional and personal lines raises ethical issues involving neutrality and objectivity. Psychologists are supposed to maintain professional distance from their clients and their research subjects. This protects against results that are influenced by personal considerations. Objectivity may be lost if psychologists have social relationships with clients or research subjects. The relevance to this case has been lost in all the attention to the First Amendment, which, of course, places no restrictions on psychologists getting too close to their subjects. But the American Psychological Association Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct does. The American Psychological Association (APA, 2010) says one should refrain from activities that “could reasonably be expected to impair the psychologist’s objectivity” (Standard 3, Human Relations section, para. 1). What About Medical Records? Loftus and Guyer’s ethical framework apparently included special considerations for confidential medical records. They state at one point, while discussing the allegations concerning burned feet, that “of course, we did not get [Nicole’s] medical records” (Loftus & Guyer, 2002b, p. 39). Loftus and Guyer do not explain why their position is so obvious. If the reason is that the documents are confidential by law, then why did not the authors apply the same logic to juvenile court records and CPS records? If the reason is that medical documents are somehow more confidential than other documents, then why did not that logic apply to the letter they quote from “Dr. S”? Loftus and Guyer (2002b) also wrote that “we learned from other sources that Jane had a fungal condition that could have been responsible for injuring her feet” (p. 38). That seems like an invasion of her medical privacy, but because they did not specify anything about the nature of these “other sources,” it is impossible to know whether to give these statements any credence. That kind of loose attribution of factual claims would not be tolerated in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Moreover, it would not be necessary if the inquiry was restricted to documented court records. Moving beyond court records is bound to raise this problem in virtually any clinical case in psychology, as 3304 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 29(18) clinical records have the same strong confidentiality provisions as medical records. There is no ethical way to study a clinical case without the patient’s approval that is both comprehensive enough to provide strong scholarship and yet respectful enough of privacy and medical confidentiality to honor the laws and related professional norms. Conclusion The novelty of what Loftus and Guyer did in this case has been lost in the broader framing of the entire case in terms of the First Amendment. Loftus has claimed that this case is about her “right to speak out on matters of grave importance” (Loftus, 2003). But none of the criticisms of her behavior in this case involve “speaking out.” They involve invasions of privacy and ethical lapses. The question of whether the conduct is proper in an ethical context is not answered by the fact that it may not be actionable in a legal context. I have not been able to find any examples in any academic publications where a professor engaged private investigators to ascertain the identity of someone from an anonymous clinical case report.3 The novelty of the actions in this case goes much further, including using the investigator to track down members of that person’s family and question them about highly sensitive events from many years ago, all without the consent or involvement of the research subject. Those facts contradict Loftus’s protestation that she has been unfairly criticized for engaging in “a reasonable quest for information on a controversial subject” (Loftus & Geis, 2009, p. 161). What are the implications of this case for the publication of case studies in psychology and medicine? If what Loftus and Guyer did is considered acceptable, then individuals involved in potential case studies will have to be warned that their family and friends could get contacted out of the blue decades later if someone decides to devote the energy to ascertain their identity and probe into their private life. It is difficult to imagine why anyone would ever agree to participate in an anonymous case study if this is one of the risks that needs to be disclosed. Loftus and Guyer purported to be doing a case study of a case study. But the contrast between Corwin and Olafson’s case study and Loftus and Guyer’s case study of a case study involves three important distinctions that have not previously been highlighted: (1) Corwin published in a professional journal that invited a range of commentary that included Ulrich Neisser, who challenged the accuracy of the memory and offered an alternative hypothesis. Loftus and Guyer published in a popular magazine that did not invite commentary from anyone who might challenge the authors’ interpretation and that published claims that were so poorly sourced that they would never pass Cheit 3305 muster in a scholarly journal. (2) Corwin qualified the case that he presented in several ways that were appropriate to a case study, but that also made his claims less than definitive. Loftus and Guyer also stated her conclusions in qualified terms, but Loftus has since made hyperbolic claims to journalists that contradicts those qualifications, stating that the mother had been “railroaded”4 (Grossman, 2003). (3) Corwin was quite transparent about his process, making the tapes available to other scholars. Loftus and Guyer were not transparent about their use of a private investigator, nor have they been transparent with any of the fruits of those efforts. Their article does not live up to its stated promise of producing “much valuable information that should assist scholars in making their own decisions” (Loftus & Guyer, 2002a, p.29). Indeed, it does not answer the question of “who abused Jane Doe” as much as it raises the question of who abused Nicole Taus. The meaning of case studies in psychology can and should be subject to scientific debate. Such debate should reflect the kind of analysis reflected in comments published along with Corwin and Olafson’s original publication. It can even involve additional investigation of documents that can be obtained with trickery or violations of law. But it crosses an ethical line to employ a private investigator to identify and interview family members connected to an anonymous case study. It also violates the profe...
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Running head: RESEARCH ETHICS IN PSYCHOLOGY

Research Ethics in Psychology
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RESEARCH ETHICS IN PSYCHOLOGY

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Research Ethics in Psychology
According to the APA, psychologist must always consider the Ethics Code and other
applicable laws established by the organization in the process of making decisions regarding
professional behavior. This is informed by the fact that despite social psychological research not
having a life and death consequences, they do have a substantial effect on individual health and
well-being. When it comes to formulating research questions, ethical guidelines stipulated by the
APA and other bodies must be put in consideration. Specifically, the risks at which research
participants are exposed to must be thoroughly considered and balanced against the benefit of the
research. The APA principle of beneficence an...


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