Desrtopa comments on Experiment: a good researcher is hard to find - Less Wrong

29 Post author: gwern 30 April 2012 05:13PM

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Comment author: Desrtopa 01 May 2012 03:59:05PM 6 points [-]

So, lessons learned? It’s probably a good idea to include such a paragraph since it’s so cheap and apparently isn’t at the expense of submissions in general.

Now that you've written this post up though, don't you risk people wondering "are they actually going to do that, or are they just saying that to encourage me?"

Comment author: gwern 01 May 2012 06:58:28PM *  3 points [-]

Yes, but this could be said of any experiment ever which involves deception.

And besides, typically research ethics calls for deceived participants to be debriefed. Either the meta-paper will be written in which case no deception is involved and there was no reason not to post this writeup; or it won't, in which case deception was involved and this writeup is ethically mandated. So either way, this writeup was worth doing.

Comment author: TobyBartels 01 May 2012 07:17:27PM *  1 point [-]

this writeup is ethically mandated

Do you mean that this post to Less Wrong is the debriefing? I don't think that posting to a blog, even one that the experimental subjects often read, is enough. What did the ethics committee say? :-)

Comment author: gwern 01 May 2012 07:29:25PM *  10 points [-]

I asked the committee in my head, and they said 'We're sure they read Discussion as much as you do. So good job - as a reward, you can go order yourself some mead!' I feel sorry for all the other guys who don't have as understanding an ethics committee as I do.