I'm not talking about moral standard when I talk about the first sentence. I'm talking about data. And this data is flawless.
They shouldn't be allowed to manipulate people, but that doesn't discredit the results.
The same way it would be very bad for us to put normal, average people in control of jetliner cockpits as a scientific test to see if they can fly them properly with guidance. But if that managed to happen, the data would still be valuable.
I wouldn't call sending one-off emails to people to be manipulation.
Given how widespread word of this thing got, how could researchers possibly distinguish responses to their email that were from people who were not aware it was research, versus responses from people who had become aware what was happening?
The same goes for people who didn't respond. Did they not respond because they heard about this being research, or did they not respond for other reasons?
This data is the opposite of flawless, it is poisoned, and any attempt to draw conclusions from the responses they got would be junk.
>Given how widespread word of this thing got, how could researchers possibly distinguish responses to their email that were from people who were not aware it was research, versus responses from people who had become aware what was happening?
By limiting results by time to anything received before everyone found out? It's pretty easy to set a time period for that. It has the benefit that people who find out will not want to participate or will complain.
>This data is the opposite of flawless, it is poisoned, and any attempt to draw conclusions from the responses they got would be junk.
Nope. Even just limiting it to 48hours would provide great data.
They shouldn't be allowed to manipulate people, but that doesn't discredit the results.
The same way it would be very bad for us to put normal, average people in control of jetliner cockpits as a scientific test to see if they can fly them properly with guidance. But if that managed to happen, the data would still be valuable.
I wouldn't call sending one-off emails to people to be manipulation.