Category: Human Sciences

Radiolab Podcasat: The Trust Engineers

February 11, 2015

“When we talk online, things can go south fast. But they don’t have to. Today, we meet a group of social engineers who are convinced that tiny changes in wording can make the online world a kinder, gentler place. So long as we agree to be their lab rats.

Ok, yeah, we’re talking about Facebook. Because Facebook, or something like it, is more and more the way we share and like, and gossip and gripe. And because it’s so big, Facebook has a created a laboratory of human behavior the likes of which we’ve never seen. We peek into the work of Arturo Bejar and a team of researchers who are tweaking our online experience, bit by bit, to try to make the world a better place. And along the way we can’t help but wonder whether that’s possible, or even a good idea.”

http://www.radiolab.org/story/trust-engineers/

Ethics of social experiments on Facebook

February 11, 2015

In late 2014, there was an uproar about revelation that facebook was conducting social experiments on its users by changing (or manipulating) users’ newsfeeds to see the effect of more positive stories vs. more negative ones for example. This issue brought up questions around the ethics of experimenting on subjects without their knowledge or consent.

With over a billion users on facebook from all races, social classes, and nations including every possible cross section of the human race, this platform allows for experimentation on a scale never before possible. Social science experiments require large samples to increase the validity of their findings and facebook offers just that.

What if asking people for consent somehow changed the validity of the results? What if people chose not to participate and our ability to use this potentially revolutionary tool (facebook) was now limited?

These are some of the many issues to consider. Below are a few of articles about the issue.

1. Facebook sorry – almost – for secret psychological experiment on users

“Facebook published the results of a 2012 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Unbeknown to users, Facebook had tampered with the news feeds of nearly 700,000 people, showing them an abnormally low number of either positive or negative posts. The experiment aimed to determine whether the company could alter the emotional state of its users.”

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/02/facebook-sorry-secret-psychological-experiment-users

2.Furor Erupts Over Facebook’s Experiment on Users

“A social-network furor has erupted over news that Facebook Inc., in 2012, conducted a massive psychological experiment on nearly 700,000 unwitting users.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/furor-erupts-over-facebook-experiment-on-users-1404085840

3. Facebook Experiments Had Few Limits

“Thousands of Facebook Inc. users received an unsettling message two years ago: They were being locked out of the social network because Facebook believed they were robots or using fake names. To get back in, the users had to prove they were real.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-experiments-had-few-limits-1404344378

4.On the ethics of Facebook experiments

“Facebook found itself in the hot seat once again this week following the publication of a study that experimentally manipulated the content of more than 600,000 users’ newsfeeds. The study finds that increasing positive content in users’ newsfeeds makes them post more positive content themselves. Likewise, increasing the amount of negative content a user sees increases the number of negative posts.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/07/03/on-the-ethics-of-facebook-experiments/

5.Facebook emotion study breached ethical guidelines, researchers say

“Researchers have roundly condemned Facebook’s experiment in which it manipulated nearly 700,000 users’ news feeds to see whether it would affect their emotions, saying it breaches ethical guidelines for “informed consent”.”

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebook-emotion-study-breached-ethical-guidelines-researchers-say

Room for Debate: Are Economists Overrated?

February 9, 2015

“One in 100 articles in The New York Times over the past few years have used the term ‘economist,’ a much greater rate than other academic professions, according to a recent article in The Upshot. Economic analysis and pronouncements are crucial to most policy decisions and debates.

But given the profession’s poor track record in forecasting and planning, and the continued struggles of many Americans, have we given economists too much authority?”

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/09/are-economists-overrated?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region

David Suzuki needs an economics refresher course

February 6, 2015

“Beyond tarring the economics profession, he displays a perplexing lack of understanding of basic economic concepts. First of all, none of the rules taught in undergraduate economics course advise the owner of a resource to deplete it as quickly as possible. Perhaps he was confused with the Tragedy of the Commons problem, where lack of private ownership causes a resource to be overused.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/david-suzuki-needs-an-economics-refresher-course/article4602350/

Economics Does Not Lie: The dismal science is at last a science—and the world is the beneficiary.

February 6, 2015

“Behind all this unprecedented growth is not only the collapse of state socialism but also a scientific revolution in economics, as yet dimly understood by the public but increasingly embraced by policymakers around the globe. The revolution began during the sixties and has finally brought economists to a broad, well-founded consensus about what constitutes good policy. No longer does economics lie; no longer would Baudelaire be able to write that “economics is a horror.” For the mass of mankind, on the contrary, it has become a source of hope.”

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_3_economics.html

Why anthropology is ‘true’ even if it is not ‘science

January 27, 2015

“A recent article in Inside Higher Ed documented the latest ‘issue’ in anthropology making its way around the Internet: anger amongst ‘scientific’ anthropologists that the executive board of the American Anthropological Association has rewritten the mission statement of the association and removed language which describes anthropology as a science.Now, I have no intention to defend the executive board of the AAA, and I have no objection to labeling myself a social scientist. However, I am concerned that objections to the new statement 1) do a bad job of understanding what ‘science’ is and 2) fail to understand that the knowledge anthropology produces can still be ‘true’ even if it is not ‘scientific’.”

http://savageminds.org/2010/12/01/why-anthropology-is-true-even-if-it-is-not-science/

12 Claims of the Verstehen Position

January 21, 2015

“However, not all philosophers agree with the ideal of unified science. They argue that the actions of human beings comprise a unique and ultimate category of events, and that therefore such fields as social psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science cannot be studied by the methods of the natural sciences (by which they usually mean physics).”

http://www.amyscott.com/Claims%20of%20the%20Verstehen%20Position.pdf