So, back in 2021, I supervised a student project where we aimed to simulate human interaction with the browser. Obviously, we needed data on human interaction. After discussion, we ruled out collecting data from a group because:
- the project was time constrained, so hardly any time, and
- there were serious ethical questions which could never be addressed well within the allotted time for this project
So we ended up discarding the idea of collecting data from a representative group, even before we got to the point of asking "how do you do handle that ethically". We ended up collecting data from 1 subject. The student in question, indeed. He handled the data from which he derived heuristics that simulated the data. The collected data therefore never left the student's hands.
<sarcasm>Silly us, we should have just not bothered and collected it from anyone and anywhere. Apparently.</sarcasm>
In all seriousness, this callous and complete disregard for ethical questions offends me so very much.
- the project was time constrained, so hardly any time, and
- there were serious ethical questions which could never be addressed well within the allotted time for this project
So we ended up discarding the idea of collecting data from a representative group, even before we got to the point of asking "how do you do handle that ethically". We ended up collecting data from 1 subject. The student in question, indeed. He handled the data from which he derived heuristics that simulated the data. The collected data therefore never left the student's hands.
<sarcasm>Silly us, we should have just not bothered and collected it from anyone and anywhere. Apparently.</sarcasm>
In all seriousness, this callous and complete disregard for ethical questions offends me so very much.