Professor by day, griefer by night

[amiable]

Just out of curiosity because i know next to nothing about sanctified methods of research... what would be the "proper" way to test how people react in situations where someone is breaking for prolonged time a social norm they've grown used to take for granted? I mean, people in comments are raising objections the subjects were not informed beforehand and the practice wasn't stopped as soon as they requested it, but wouldn't either of these things affect the results?

There is concept in research called "informed consent."  Informed consent requires that anytime you do a scientific study on human beings that human being must agree to the study and the risks associated with that study before hand.   Now if the case of many psychological studies folks can mislead the patient about the study in order to get results not possible in the absence of misleading (for example there are a famous series of studies related to human response to authority wherein test subjects were unaware of the studies true purpose).  But in any event the subject must be AWARE there is being a study conducted and give their CONSENT to participate.  Anything else is considered unethical and grounds for sanction (including criminal sanctions).

Now you can OBSERVE all you like without informing subjects, but as soon as you the researcher start fucking with them you HAVE to have informed consent.  This is not optional, this is not him being a likeable rogue outside the system.   This is him violating one of the basic tenants of ethical research behavior.  That's why he backpedaled so quickly, if his administration found out he was doing this shit and claiming it is "research" they would fire him so fast it would make your head spin.  Tenure does not protect you from ethics violations.  

See: Tuskegee experiments.

[amiable]

I think the media interest stems mainly from the real life death threats he received which likely haven't been documented in this way before. Oh for sure you say we've all experienced this, but if we were to take those death threats as seriously as some of you are taking Myer's in game behaviour then a lot of people should also be on police record.

Ammarr now you are just being disingenuous.  We aren't talking about his in game behavior, we are talking about the crap he is spewing in an interview and claiming is "research."

Remove the ginourmous chip from your shoulder.

[Amarr HM]

There is concept....

This is a crock of shit, true research can't be carried out and gain accurate results under this premise. Why well the test subject will always behave differently when they are aware they are under scrutinsation.
 

Ammarr now you are just being disingenuous.  We aren't talking about his in game behavior, we are talking about the crap he is spewing in an interview and claiming is "research."

Remove the ginourmous chip from your shoulder.

I wasn't referring to this discussion ITT I was referring to why the media had taken such an interest. Also I don't know where you get the chip on your shoulder idea from, does everyone who argues against you have a chip on their shoulder?

I feel the medieval group mentality closing in here, "he doesn't agree with us flame him, he's a non believer".

[amiable]

This is a crock of shit, true research can't be carried out and gain accurate results under this premise. Why well the test subject will always behave differently when they are aware they are under scrutinsation.

Well them I am glad you are not now and will never be a scientist who is involved with human research. As someone who is directly involved with human clinical trials I can tell you unambiguously: you're frighteningly wrong.
 

I feel the medieval group mentality closing in here, "he doesn't agree with us flame him, he's a non believer".

"Help, help I'm being repressed."  

[Nevermore]

I feel the medieval group mentality closing in here, "he doesn't agree with us flame him, he's a non believer".

The Society is such a bully.

[Amarr HM]

I'm in your thread destroying your social constructs 

[schild]

Just wanted to jump in and say this guy didn't deserve 6 pages let alone one page of attention.

[Prospero]

This is a crock of shit, true research can't be carried out and gain accurate results under this premise. Why well the test subject will always behave differently when they are aware they are under scrutinsation.

Yes, yes they can. You have to craft your studies carefully, and you occasionally have to misdirect people as to the purpose of the study, but many studies are successfully carried out with these rules in place. Ethics are a bitch, but we've seen the alternative, and it is terrifying.

[Amarr HM]

Well them I am glad you are not now and will never be a scientist who is involved with human research. As someone who is directly involved with human clinical trials I can tell you unambiguously: you're frighteningly wrong.

I'm glad you're doing clinical trials and not sociology or anthropology, cause then you would find you are the one who is wrong.

[amiable]

Well them I am glad you are not now and will never be a scientist who is involved with human research. As someone who is directly involved with human clinical trials I can tell you unambiguously: you're frighteningly wrong.

I'm glad you're doing clinical trials and not sociology or anthropology, cause then you would find you are the one who is wrong.

You have gone Grunk level crazy.   

[Prospero]

Don't sociology and anthropology generally study large populations through observation only? I honestly don't know, that's what it seems like they would do.

There's a big difference between watching a bear to see how it lives and kicking a bear in the balls to see what it will do.

[Amarr HM]

Indeed, but they definitely don't involve administering drugs to old people so it's impossible to say "I do clinical trials I know what I'm talking about". Also I'm sure there are other forms of research that this could come under but none involve using medicine.

There's a big difference between watching a bear to see how it lives and kicking a bear in the balls to see what it will do.

Bears aren't human, noone got hurt.

You have gone Grunk level crazy.   

Yeh cause I'm the one trying to compare (alleged) analytical studies of human behaviour in a virtual playground to human drug testing, maybe you should give me some of yo shit so I can think more clearly.

[Prospero]

The accurate comparison isn't drug testing, it is psych testing. His poking at players could bring up issues in the unwilling test subjects that could cause permanent damage to the subject or others. Say he gets someone riled up with his taunting. Said person goes and punches his wife/kid because he has aggression issues. For some reason ethics committees have an issue with that. Fucking liberals.

[Lum]

DON'T HURT THE BEARS 

[Nevermore]

I'm glad you're doing clinical trials and not sociology or anthropology, cause then you would find you are the one who is wrong.

What sociological or anthropological studies are you performing that makes you more qualified to determine that he's wrong?  Besides the one you're performing in this thread right now, I mean.

[Khaldun]

Just a side note on IRBs. Their authority has expanded somewhat over the years, to the point that a lot of scholars are beginning to find them intrusive. But in theory, they govern experimental research on human subjects and nothing else. So, for example, a philosopher doesn't have to apply to an IRB if he's studying the relevance of Kant to arguments about "just war" theory used in the case of the Iraq War. A literary critic doesn't have to apply to an IRB if she's working on a biography of a modernist poet. A historian doesn't have to apply to an IRB if he's reading medieval documents.

Also IRBs vary from campus to campus, though there's something of a centrally mandated standard.

So studying a digital game is kind of a grey area. If you're writing about it as a media studies critic, no IRB. If you're conducting psychological experiments on visual perception in 3d environments, you definitely need an IRB.

If you're claiming you were experimenting on people by griefing them, IRB would probably be required. If you were just acting like a griefer and then writing a memoir or journalistic account, comparable to Julian Dibbell's book on gold farming where he explored the subject partly by experiencing the RMT trade, you could probably argue you didn't need an IRB. But the latter mode of research is not very common in most academic fields, and anybody pursuing it needs to be really careful about saying that they're not doing rigorous social science.

[Khaldun]

Just wanted to jump in and say this guy didn't deserve 6 pages let alone one page of attention.

Look, if you want people to talk games and not politics, maybe just let conversations about games go where they will, as long as they're not going into Den-able territory.

[Khaldun]

Well them I am glad you are not now and will never be a scientist who is involved with human research. As someone who is directly involved with human clinical trials I can tell you unambiguously: you're frighteningly wrong.

I'm glad you're doing clinical trials and not sociology or anthropology, cause then you would find you are the one who is wrong.

You have gone Grunk level crazy.   

Really, no, he hasn't. A lot of cultural anthropologists and others using ethnographic methods argue that they're not human subjects research in the sense that IRBs were meant to have authority over. There's a really active and sometimes ferocious debate about exactly this subject going on in academia. No one disagrees that experimentation of any kind requires human subjects review. Ethnography is not experimental.

[Prospero]

It seems like the difference in this case his action to provoke a response. If he ran around looking for griefers and watching how people responded to them that would be one thing. He kicked the bear in the balls himself though to see what the reaction would look like. Are ethnographers running into villages and purposefully causing shitstorms just to see how the locals respond? That seems unlikely.

[Khaldun]

Not usually, no. But ethnographers do participate as well as observe, that's key to what they're doing. I don't think what Myers was doing was ethnography, though: he was too active, without that key sense of stepping back, keeping distance. I have no problem with someone writing in a more memoir-ish, journalistic vein (I think Dibbell's stuff is great)--but one of the key things there is that you had better be an interesting person yourself or you had better have a lot of perspective on what you're doing. Not sure this researcher has either.

[Lantyssa]

Not only did he do it once and let it go, he kept doing it.  He continued to provoke people who were already upset.

It wasn't a sociological or anthropological study based on observation, it was based on "What happens if I stir the hornets' nest?  Repeatedly?"  It falls much more under a psyche study where unwitting people were co-opted for his 'experiment'.  Sure he could study the resulting sociological implications, but only if you completely ignore that he was the cause of shifting social dynamics by acting maliciously against individuals.

It is a lot different to be an observer than an active participant.  There are ways that he could have gotten around this if he had truly been interested in research.

[amiable]

Also IRBs vary from campus to campus, though there's something of a centrally mandated standard.

This is very true and very annoying for multi-center studies as often you need to get individual IRB approval from each participating site.  Still I can't imagine a study wherein you are interacting with humans beyond observational that does NOT require IRB approval.  All that 7up stuff required IRB approval and it is minimally intrusive.

Edit: for the non-science folk IRB = Institutional Review Board.  They are the body at every institution that does human research that approves such research and makes sure it conforms to ethical standards.

[Soln]

this thread needs good ole fashioned Haemish

[Amarr HM]

I'm glad you're doing clinical trials and not sociology or anthropology, cause then you would find you are the one who is wrong.

What sociological or anthropological studies are you performing that makes you more qualified to determine that he's wrong?  Besides the one you're performing in this thread right now, I mean.

It wouldn't take a PHD in anthropology to see that "informed consent" doesn't work very well in this scenario, you could just watch one episode of Big Brother to see how group social experiments behave differently under the microscope (I only ever watched one episode I hate that show).

[Prospero]

you could just watch one episode of Big Brother to see how group social experiments behave differently when scripted.

FTFY

[Ingmar]

Amarr, if you need an example of what amiable is talking about when he says there are reasons you have to have ethical review (without Godwinning this, which we totally could at this point) even for behavioral experiments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

[tmp]

But in any event the subject must be AWARE there is being a study conducted and give their CONSENT to participate.  Anything else is considered unethical and grounds for sanction (including criminal sanctions).

Now you can OBSERVE all you like without informing subjects, but as soon as you the researcher start fucking with them you HAVE to have informed consent.

There seems to be a grey area here, then... are you saying if there was some third party doing the griefing instead, he could write down what'd amount to the same observations/conclusions and that'd be all legal, even though no one was informed they're being studied and without need to consent etc?

[Amarr HM]

Amarr, if you need an example of what amiable is talking about when he says there are reasons you have to have ethical review (without Godwinning this, which we totally could at this point) even for behavioral experiments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

I'm not I understand why it can be an unethical approach in a lot of circumstances, but I just think it produces less accurate results. What I am saying is that someone conducting an experiment within the confines of a virtual world albeit a quasi social one, is a whole lot different to performing medical tests on people in the real world. Also in that prison experiment they should have added real prisoners and dropped a few bars of soap to give those Stanford boys a feel for the real thing.

[Ingmar]

But in any event the subject must be AWARE there is being a study conducted and give their CONSENT to participate.  Anything else is considered unethical and grounds for sanction (including criminal sanctions).

Now you can OBSERVE all you like without informing subjects, but as soon as you the researcher start fucking with them you HAVE to have informed consent.

There seems to be a grey area here, then... are you saying if there was some third party doing the griefing instead, he could write down what'd amount to the same observations/conclusions and that'd be all legal, even though no one was informed they're being studied and without need to consent etc?

In academic terms that's absolutely correct. You can learn things from watching gorillas in the wild, and you can learn things by interacting directly with Koko, but the later case has a lot more caveats and problems that you have to work out both ethically and just experimentally. When he jumped in and just started pushing people's buttons, he was essentially poisoning the well experimentally. Any of his conclusions are extremely suspect simply because of his methods.

[Amarr HM]

I personally don't see why we should hit him with unethical banner to belittle his work, seems a bit didactic. With more research in how to draw people into games to create enjoyment, more research could be done to see how this drawing power might also have negative effects. I mean it's possible that a thirteen year old kid could have been doing this and if it indeed is the cause of such mental anguish, then surely it's the developers/designers who should be accountable for allowing it to proceed.

[amiable]

But in any event the subject must be AWARE there is being a study conducted and give their CONSENT to participate.  Anything else is considered unethical and grounds for sanction (including criminal sanctions).

Now you can OBSERVE all you like without informing subjects, but as soon as you the researcher start fucking with them you HAVE to have informed consent.

There seems to be a grey area here, then... are you saying if there was some third party doing the griefing instead, he could write down what'd amount to the same observations/conclusions and that'd be all legal, even though no one was informed they're being studied and without need to consent etc?

Yes, that is correct.

I personally don't see why we should hit him with unethical banner to belittle his work, seems a bit didactic. With more research in how to draw people into games to create enjoyment, more research could be done to see how this drawing power might also have negative effects. I mean it's possible that a thirteen year old kid could have been doing this and if it indeed is the cause of such mental anguish, then surely it's the developers/designers who should be accountable for allowing it to proceed.

It's a professional ethics issue.  This is NOT research.  He is calling it research to make himself sound important and relevant.  It is missing other hallmarks of research beyond just ethical approval (controls, experimental design, a hypothesis, etc...)   It's just one dude being a jackass and hiding behind a "oh I'm doing 'research'" defense. 

[Venkman]

I mean it's possible that a thirteen year old kid could have been doing this and if it indeed is the cause of such mental anguish, then surely it's the developers/designers who should be accountable for allowing it to proceed.

That's also been covered here though. If it was a rules violation: ban. If it was a soft rule: warn on forums. Developers have no way of easily telling whether someone is 13 or 39 or 59, whether they're a student, teacher, or researcher. They can datamine the stats, read the logs, and invisible-monitor.

This kind of things I feel like goes back to that adage that you can't ever watch something without affecting it in some form.

[Amarr HM]

It's a professional ethics issue.  This is NOT research.  He is calling it research to make himself sound important and relevant.  It is missing other hallmarks of research beyond just ethical approval (controls, experimental design, a hypothesis, etc...)   It's just one dude being a jackass and hiding behind a "oh I'm doing 'research'" defense. 

The guys a maverick he pissed off some gamers, there was an outcry heard across the virtual universe and every review board in the country is up in arms  

This is his previous work seems to have a fair amount under his belt to suggest it wasn't a whimsical thing or an afterthought,

http://www.masscomm.loyno.edu/~dmyers/research_goals.html

According to that this is what he was working towards,

http://game.itu.dk/player/index.html

[kildorn]

For what it's worth, HHS has guidelines up for an IRB. I don't know how binding they are legally, but Meyer's work would have been up for an exemption to informed consent simply by virtue of having an abysmally low chance of harm to the subjects, which is about the only exemption to informed consent. An IRB would still need to say it's okay, however.

But beyond the consent issue, he seemed to have absolutely no scientific methods for this study to prove anything. Where's the control group to compare results against? Does he have a detailed daily log of event->reaction, event->reaction? Or are we just supposed to take the summary and assume it's all kosher on the back end? Was there anyone assigned to monitor him during the experiment, to make sure he wasn't compromised/compromising the experiment since he was an active part of it? Bleh, it just fails pretty much everything. Imagine if a student turned these results into him for a class, the student would get reamed.

Anyways, it's further complicated by his history of performing the same activities (based on his forum archived posts) far prior to the study's beginning, which implies he was compromised before ever starting the study. Essentially he couldn't have a control, since he's just logging "this is my life" with no comparison to the same situations without triggers (if he didn't trash talk/respond in broadcast on a different character, what changed? How did the social dynamic work if he had yet another character who adhered to the social norms? etc)

[amiable]

http://www.masscomm.loyno.edu/~dmyers/research_goals.htm

I just read some of those articles.