Participant consent and metadata, analyses

[James Crippen]

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:33, Claire Bowern <clairebowern at gmail.com> wrote:
> James, my point was just that metadata, as a type of data, requires
> the same sorts of discussions and thoughts as field data.

Certainly.

> I disagree with you that "metadata release requires permission" is too broad
> -- it's the start of the question about what the metadata contains and how it,
> along with other data, should be handled.

I think this is misleading. My point is that metadata are not all
created equal, just as not all data are created equal. So I agree with
your point above, that metadata are like data and require the same
ethical considerations in terms of privacy and so forth. But “metadata
release requires permission” doesn’t follow from this at all. Instead
*some* metadata do require permission for release, but it’s quite
obvious that some metadata don’t. The length of a recording is, except
perhaps in some very unusual and imaginative contexts, not something
which needs permission to be released to the public. In most cases,
the languages spoken on a recording are also not something which needs
to be kept private. The file format of a recording is another example,
and there are plenty of others.

> Thinking about it explicitly is important.

I agree completely. But beating linguists with the “get permission for
everything!” stick is not a way to get them to think about ethical
problems explicitly. That just turns people off, and leads them to
care even less about the problem. Linguists are, in my experience,
easily irritated by blanket statements which fail to respect the
complexity of an issue. (That’s why I’ve pissed off more than a few
linguists in my life.) And this is exactly the sort of blanket
statement that would irritate your average beginning field linguist.
Irritated people do not sit back and consider an issue with careful
introspection and subtle reasoning, they react angrily and discount
the entire premise. So beating them with the “get permission for
everything!” stick leads them quickly to avoid getting permission for
anything.

I don’t think many linguists want to worry about ethical issues. They
need to be convinced that they should, but confronting them with
something huge and monolithic is not the way to do it. Ethical conduct
is not inspired by lawmaking and enforcement, it is inspired by
introspection, careful consideration, and plenty of example scenarios.

> For example, there is a fieldworker who regularly blogs
> rather personal information about her consultants, and while she is
> careful to anonymize data in her thesis, she doesn't do the same for
> her 'personal' web site. That seems to me to show that while she's
> thought through the question of data/metadata protection in some way,
> she hasn't thought it through fully.

That’s a great example of a problem that needs to be addressed. It
should be written up as a case study of how not to handle one’s
research products ethically. (I would also hope that you or someone
else close to this individual will talk with her privately about the
issue so as to prevent her from making any unrectifiable mistakes.)
Publicizing this case would help other linguists realize that they
should think carefully before referring to specific fieldwork
individuals even in a semi-public environment. In contrast, telling
other linguists “you must document permission for everything” is going
to go right over their heads, just like the inconvenient IRB
regulations which people ignore.

Cheers,
James