Use Of Deception In Research Research Articles

Deception about study purpose does not affect participant behavior

The use of deception in research is divisive along disciplinary lines. Whereas psychologists argue that deception may be necessary to obtain unbiased measures, economists hold that deception can generate suspicion of researchers, invalidating measures and ‘poisoning’ the participant pool for others. However, experimental studies on the effects of deception, notably false-purpose deception—the most common form of experimental deception—are scarce. Challenges with participant attrition and avoiding confounds with a form of deception in which two related studies are presented as unrelated likely explain this scarcity. Here, we avoid these issues, testing within an experiment to what extent false-purpose deception affects honesty. We deploy two commonly used incentivized measures of honesty and unethical behavior: coin-flip and die-roll tasks. Across two pre-registered studies with over 2000 crowdsourced participants, we found that false-purpose deception did not affect honesty in either task, even when we deliberately provoked suspicion of deception. Past experience of deception also had no bearing on honesty. However, incentivized measures of norms indicated that many participants had reservations about researcher use of false-purpose deception in general—often considered the least concerning form of deception. Together, these findings suggest that while false-purpose deception is not fundamentally problematic in the context of measuring honesty, it should only be used as a method of last resort. Our results motivate further experimental research to study the causal effects of other forms of deception, and other potential spillovers.

Deceiving Research Participants: Is It Inconsistent With Valid Consent?

It is widely assumed that the use of deception in research is always inconsistent with obtaining valid consent. In addition, guidelines and regulations permit research without valid consent only when it poses no greater than minimal risk. Current practice thus prohibits studies that use deception and pose greater than minimal risk, including studies that rely on deceptive methods to evaluate experimental treatments. To assess whether these prohibitions are justified, the present paper evaluates five arguments that might be thought to support the assumption that deception is always inconsistent with valid consent. Analysis of these arguments reveals that deception is frequently, but not always, inconsistent with obtaining valid consent for research. This conclusion suggests that, in order to avoid unnecessarily blocking valuable research, current policies and practice should be revised to recognize the conditions under which the use of deception can be consistent with obtaining research participants' valid consent.

A Teachable Ethics Scandal

In this article, I describe a recent scandal involving collusion between officials at the American Psychological Association (APA) and the U.S. Department of Defense, which appears to have enabled the torture of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The scandal is a relevant, complex, and engaging case that teachers can use in a variety of courses. Details of the scandal exemplify a number of psychological concepts, including obedience, groupthink, terror management theory, group influence, and motivation. The scandal can help students understand several factors that make ethical decision-making difficult, including stress, emotions, and cognitive factors such as loss aversion, anchoring, framing, and ethical fading. I conclude by exploring some parallels between the current torture scandal and the development of APA’s ethics guidelines regarding the use of deception in research.

Counterfactual Consent and the Use of Deception in Research.

The use of deception for the purposes of research is a widespread practice within many areas of study. If we want to avoid either absolute acceptance or absolute rejection of this practice then we require some method of distinguishing between those uses of deception which are morally acceptable and those which are not. In this article I discuss the concept of counterfactual consent, and propose a related distinction between counterfactual-defeating deception and counterfactual-compatible deception. The aim is to show that this proposed distinction will be useful in furthering the debate regarding the use of deception for the purposes of research.

Forgoing Debriefing in Deceptive Research: Is It Ever Ethical?

The use of deception in research is generally permitted so long as participants are debriefed at the conclusion of their participation. Several authoritative research ethics guidelines allow investigators to omit debriefing under certain circumstances, however. Here we examine various justifications for forgoing debriefing in deceptive research, including concerns about subject pool contamination, the risk that revealing the deception will be harmful or distressing to participants, and issues of practicability. We conclude that, contrary to current practice, omitting debriefing is ethically acceptable only when debriefing is impracticable, the deception is innocuous, and no reasonable person would object to involvement in the research.

To deceive or not to deceive! Legal implications of phishing covert research

Whilst studying mobile users’ susceptibility to phishing attacks, we found ourselves subject to regulations concerning the use of deception in research. We argue that such regulations are misapplied in a way that hinders the progress of security research. Our argument analyses the existing framework and the ethical principles of conducting phishing research in light of these regulations. Building on this analysis and reflecting on real world experience; we present our view of good practice and suggest guidance on how to prepare legally compliant proposals to concerned ethics committees.

Preserving the Ethical Propriety of Statistical Devices

C. D. Herrera (1996) introduced an innovative argument against the use of deception in psychological research. In essence, Herrera contended that because of the presumed problems with null hypothesis statistical testing, researchers could not justify their continued use of deception in research. Although this is an interesting argument, there are several alternative perspectives that must be considered. In examining these alternatives, the author concluded that psychologists may continue to use deception under certain circumstances outlined in the American Psychological Association's ethical code of conduct.

The use and abuse of deception.

An article in this issue reports on a research project that used pseudo patients to evaluate the quality of care.' Two fundamental questions are raised: When, if ever, is the use of deception in research morally justified? How useful is research involving deception in adding to knowledge? The issue of deception in research is neither new nor undiscussed. Many recent articles have examined the ethical questions it raises. This widespread concern with deception undoubtedly reflects a basic conviction: that deception is morally hard to justify, even or especially in the pursuit of the truth. Widespread also is concern with untoward consequences of deception in research when harm is done to subjects in the experiment. Harm is done to experimenters as well by distorting their value system and the value system of their students. As Sissela Bok has pointed out,2 the physician-patient relationship is predicated on trust, and anything which undermines that basic relationship damages the care of patients. This is true for both the patient and the physician, since the physician is just as dependent on the patient (for a truthful history and for cooperation in care) as is the patient