I.2. Research Ethics: Human Subjects and Research Openness

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Elliot Posner
Case Western Reserve University
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue May 10, 2016 10:42 pm

Openness and Perceptions of Researcher Ties to US Intelligence and Other Agenices

PostSun Nov 06, 2016 4:09 pm

Some contributors (quoted below) have voiced concerns about the impact of increased openness on participants’ perceptions of researcher ties to US intelligence and other agencies. Is this something we should be thinking about here? What are the ethical issues?

A guest contributor wrote (on Tuesday, October 18, 2016 in II.2 Evidence from research interactions with human participants, “How and when can we make available, in part or in full, evidence from research with human participants?): “These concerns are all the more salient when a U.S.-based researcher conducts fieldwork in the Global South. Such data sharing requirements would only feed into the perception that one’s research is being conducted for the purposes of U.S. foreign policy or to gather intelligence for the CIA.”

Another guest contributor wrote (on October 25, 2016 in another thread [“Human Subjects and Research Openness: Tensions and Dilemmas”] of this forum): “Finally, I feel that a related issue of transparency in research regards the use of scholarly research from the Middle East. Extensive US involvement in the region means American researchers, particularly white boys with heavy accents in Arabic, are assumed to be CIA. It does not help that some scholars in the US do advise the US intelligence community. The discipline needs more discussion of these issues.”

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