I'm reading up on the whole Reddit "Change My View" AI experiment.
It's striking to me how often the researchers use the adjective "ethical" in their responses. But reading the passages, it seems to me they just ethically inserted "ethical" into their ethical statements to shift the ethical conversation from a conversation about ethics to an ethical conversation where "ethical" becomes a meaningless ethical buzzword.
If you catch my ethical drift.
Researchers at the University of Zurich spammed a popular subreddit with AI posts. What they learned is a lesson on ethics.
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2025/04/29/reddit-and-the-ethics-of-ai-in-online-communities/
Oh, the irony! Researchers deploy fake AI bots to study human behavior... by deceiving humans. 🤔
Reddit's lawyer calls it "improper and highly unethical" - because secretly experimenting on users is never okay.
Trust in science requires actual ethics, not just algorithms.
University of Zurich Admits Secret AI Bot Based Persuasion Experiment on Reddit with Disturbing Results
#AI #GenAI #Ethics #ResearchEthics #Reddit #ChangeMyView #UZH #LLM #GenAI #AIethics #AIsafety #OnlineCommunities #Manipulation #Deception #TechNews
#ResearchEthics #DigitalEthics “Community-level experiments impact communities, not just individuals.”
For me, one of the most important sentences in an overall thoughtful declaration by reddit moderators (available here https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1k8b2hj/meta_unauthorized_experiment_on_cmv_involving/)whose community was not only studied by UZH researchers, but also unethically manipulated by their undisclosed, egregious AI-bots.
More infos [in German] here: https://dnip.ch/2025/04/28/reddit-user-mit-ki-bots-getaeuscht-das-fragwuerdige-experiment-der-universitaet-zuerich/
📢Next Tues. 29/04 Join experts in migration, health & political ecology to explore ethics in participatory research with racialized migrant communities. Hosted by the IMBRACE project 🌍🧠#ClimateJustice #MigrationResearch #ResearchEthics #HealthEquity www.uab.cat/web/sala-de-...
Some $328 million of research grants to institutions was canned amid a broader restructuring of the National Science Foundation. Disinformation research and empowerment of underprivileged people in STEM fields were prime targets. https://www.nextgov.com/policy/2025/04/nsf-cancels-over-400-grants-covering-disinformation-deepfakes-and-stem-education/404731 Can't have people looking into THAT! #scenceandsociety #research #disinformation #researchethics
New publication in the @GESIS Guides to Digital Behavioral Data by Jo Lukito, Sebastian Stier, Mareike Wieland, @danica, Frank Mangold, and me:
"Overview of Ethical Considerations when Working with Digital Behavioral Data"
https://rrr.is/dbdethics
#computationalsocialscience #digitaltraces #researchethics
"Ethics of Open Science: Navigating Scientific Disagreements"
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/open-access/2025/03/06/ethics-of-open-science-navigating-scientific-disagreements
#OpenScience #ResearchEthics #Volcanology #Volcanologists #ClimateChange #TropicalCyclones #Hurricanes #anthropology #anthropologists
Dazu eine Nachricht vom heutigen Tage: Israel trainiert ein #LLM mit den abgehörten Alltagsgesprächen der palästinensischen Bevölkerung der besetzten Gebiete
https://www.972mag.com/israeli-intelligence-chatgpt-8200-surveillance-ai/
Mir mangelt es an Diplomatie, aber diese Fülle an Vorträgen, die in reinem Techno-Solutionism Systeme abfeiern, die auf der großflächigen Ausbeutung von Mensch und Umwelt zur Profitmaximierung einiger weniger obszön reicher Männer basieren, die mit ihrem Plan u.a. auch die unabhängigen Wissenschaften abzuschaffen, nicht hinterm Berg halten, und dann im Nachsatz hinterher schieben, dass mensch das jetzt schon auch kritisch reflektieren müsse, sind ein deutliches Zeichen für das Scheitern (eher Versagen) der Geisteswissenschaften.
Wir nutzen doch auch keine Methoden, die auf dem Ausmessen kolonialer Körper durch Zwangsarbeiter_innen basieren, oder?
Here's an update on my attempt to determine how concerned to be about the privacy and security of our data now that my employer added Box AI.
I'm most worried about information "leaking" from one AI session to another, so decided to test for that. Spoiler: info did seem to be retained over time and users.
For the tests I used a text file with an interview_age column in months, though that it's months isn't given in the document.
In the first box AI chat, when I asked "how old are the participants in years?", as expected, it reported the values as given in the interview_age column (e.g., that one participant was 458 years old). I then told the AI that "the ages in the
document are in months. how old are they in years?", after which it (reasonably) divided by 12 to convert.
The test was whether, in later sessions, box AI would "remember" that the age column was in months and report the age in years after dividing by 12 without being told to do so.
In our tests, that is what happened: the box AI usually converted the ages correctly first try in later sessions, both when I queried the same document from different computers (my wustl.box account but on different days and networks), and when two colleagues opened their first AI session with a newly-shared copy of the document.
It'll be interesting to hear what our IT folks think, but I am getting less and less confident in box for sensitive data.
Wiley journal retracts 26 papers for 'compromised peer review' — https://retractionwatch.com/2025/02/19/environmental-toxicology-wiley-journal-retractions-compromised-peer-review/
#HackerNews #WileyJournal #Retraction #CompromisedPeerReview #AcademicIntegrity #ResearchEthics #26Papers
📝 ETHICAL COMMITMENTS | Accountability is a core part of responsible research. We have published our Ethical Commitments - aligned with Combatting Bias’ mission - as one way to keep ourselves accountable for the work we are producing.
➡️ Read them here: https://combattingbias.huygens.knaw.nl/about/ethicalcommitments/
We're curious, how do you keep yourself accountable? đź’ˇ
We’re always open for further comments, questions, and feedback - contact us! https://combattingbias.huygens.knaw.nl/contact/contact/
OSINT is powerful, but only if done right. Mistakes like confirmation bias, failing to archive, or misusing tools can ruin an investigation. Learn how to avoid these pitfalls and conduct reliable research. 🔎✨
đź“– Read more: https://osintresearch.center/2025/02/18/avoiding-osint-pitfalls-how-to-conduct-reliable-open-source-investigations/
#OSINT #OpenSourceIntelligence #ResearchEthics
A reminder of why we need informed consent and ethics approval for human participant research.
"In 1964, the medical researcher Paul Beeson, who had been a professor of medicine at both Yale and Oxford, wrote that the Nuremberg Code was “a wonderful document to say why the war crimes were atrocities, but it’s not a very good guide to clinical investigation which is done with high motives”."
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/feb/11/the-coventry-experiment-why-were-indian-women-in-britain-given-radioactive-food-without-consent
#ResearchEthics #MedicalEthics #InformedConsent #HumanResearch #HistoryOfScience
A worldwide itinerary of research ethics in science for a better social responsibility and justice: a bibliometric analysis and review
"Ethics of Open Science: Managing dangers to scientists"
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/open-access/2025/02/05/ethics-of-open-science-managing-dangers-to-scientists/
#OpenScience #ResearchEthics #Urbex #UrbanExploration #DisasterDiplomacy #DRRConflict #ConflictDRR #ConflictDisasters #DisastersConflict #PlaceHacking #DisasterEthics
Preparing an internal workshop on #SecondaryDataAnalysis for tomorrow, brings me back to my thread on the very minimal #ResearchEthics and #ResearchIntegrity checks to perform when one has found a data set:
https://mastodon.social/deck/@jrboehnke/109823124976479472
What I think I have not moved to here, were some brief comments regarding minimum standards for the use of routinely collected data in health services. 🧵👇
Why does science struggle to correct itself? 🤔
The NanoBubbles project investigates why errors persist in research, while ROR² explores Open Science & integrity. 🔬
Interdisciplinary research for a more trustworthy scientific system! Read the interview with Frédérique Bordignon @fredbordignon
đź”— https://pulse49.com/2025/01/29/transforming-science-how-ror2-and-nanobubbles-are-enhancing-transparency-trust-and-integrity-in-research/
#ScholarlyCommunication #ResearchEthics
