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sequoia

Wed, Jul 01 2009, 2:45 pm

What about "Pledged," where the author, who looks young for her age, actually lived in a sorority house for a year pretending to be one of them?

Really, if it's a silly article, maybe it is best to ignore it?

PAMOM

Wed, Jul 01 2009, 6:21 pm

Princessleah's posting from the Brown website was helpful. In case it help clarify anything, remember that any discipline where human "subjects" can be harmed by research--even if not in a particular study--has much more stringent ethics reviews. Remember the Tuskeegee Study (where Black men who had VD were deliberately left untreated and not informed of their disease) or more recent studies using uninformed convicts as subjects for medical testing (shapes of Naziism here). Medical review boards and medical-related/overlap areas of inquiry have VERY strict reviews. Anthropologists (and sociologists, etc) aren't supposed to agitate in the groups they are observing but they can certainly write ethically about their observations about groups in which they actively participate or more passively observe. More recent schools of anthropology have often followed I Levi-Strauss, who wrote about the issue of his own mind and interpretation as the filters through which we (the readers) view his research. Such a researcher would discuss the role she/he played in the community under investigation (even in footnotes).
There's a much-discussed undergrad sociology paper at my university that meets all ethical standards of the university and is typical of papers submitted in fulfillment of the first year assignment: a femal undergrad went to Loehman's, spent several hours over a three-week period observing what sort of underwear women wore in the communal dressing room, and wrote a short paper connecting )I believe) underwear with actions in the dressing room. No one's name was used, the investigator had some interaction with the other patrons (and she shopped!), and the study violated no one's privacy because no names or identifying info was used. A mental health professional can't discuss confidential info without written permission but this isn't the same. We can disagree with her conclusions and interpretations but hey--the examined life is fun!

sneakermom

Wed, Jul 01 2009, 11:54 pm

clarrisa wrote:

Quote:

When I was in college, people would often have to leave home for months or years to study something of interest, in order to write a paper. I read many ethnographies (I majored in Cultural Anthropology) and those people often went really far for a really long time

That's true but in traditional anthropology the person doing the studying had to reach out to the group they were studying, gain their trust, develop a relationship with them. The people that were studied had the power to include them, teach them about themselves or not it was a choice they made. Here at imamother, this woman took something many here feel is sacred and exploited it for her own purpose. Not that anyone doesn't think that can't happen. It's just that a certain level of trust between each other does develop and she breached that.

Imaonwheels

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 3:20 am

sequoia wrote:

Yes, hidden observation is common in sociology. I learned as a very young student a now classic case of a researcher who displayed certain symptoms to commit himself to a psychiatric hospital to study patient behavior and informal social structure. He was lucky he cleared it with an administrator because even when he reported cessation of symptoms and spoke very lucidly he had difficulty getting himself released.

Some areas have even more grey. In Israeli schools where drug abuse is suspected to spreading among students a "choker noar", usually a very young looking police woman, will pose as a new student and work her way into the crowd to catch the pusher or just bust the users.

I think any uproar about this I more than it deserves, was anyone here tangibly hurt?

mimivan

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 3:27 am

I think it is much more harmful to really belong to a site and use posts as material to ridicule in your blog..

sarahd

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 6:00 am

PAMOM wrote:

discuss the role she/he played in the community under investigation (even in footnotes).
There's a much-discussed undergrad sociology paper at my university that meets all ethical standards of the university and is typical of papers submitted in fulfillment of the first year assignment: a femal undergrad went to Loehman's, spent several hours over a three-week period observing what sort of underwear women wore in the communal dressing room, and wrote a short paper connecting )I believe) underwear with actions in the dressing room. No one's name was used, the investigator had some interaction with the other patrons (and she shopped!), and the study violated no one's privacy because no names or identifying info was used. A mental health professional can't discuss confidential info without written permission but this isn't the same. We can disagree with her conclusions and interpretations but hey--the examined life is fun!

I guess sociology is just a revolting field, where people play peeping Tom or exploit other people's trust in them to write papers and gain academic fame.

sarahd

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 6:04 am

Clarissa wrote:

sarahd wrote:

Clarissa wrote:

So everything I've said here? I own it. Except the brownie recipe. That is for the world.

So where is that brownie recipe already?! I want to see it! (Unless it's the Double-Decker Mocha one. That one I have already.)

Actually, I don't know where it is on the site. It's for extra-fudgy brownies. If I can't find it, I'll post it again.

Could you, pretty please? I searched for extra-fudgy (extra fudgy, extra fudgie, extra...) brownies and nothing came up.

happyone

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 6:59 am

Now who's writing a thesis on the diverse reactions of Frum women being analyzed and feeling cheated?

Clarissa

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 12:12 pm

sarahd wrote:

Clarissa wrote:

sarahd wrote:

Clarissa wrote:

So everything I've said here? I own it. Except the brownie recipe. That is for the world.

So where is that brownie recipe already?! I want to see it! (Unless it's the Double-Decker Mocha one. That one I have already.)

Actually, I don't know where it is on the site. It's for extra-fudgy brownies. If I can't find it, I'll post it again.

Could you, pretty please? I searched for extra-fudgy (extra fudgy, extra fudgie, extra...) brownies and nothing came up.

I just typed it over on the Cookie Board.

merelyme

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 12:15 pm

Thanks, Clarissa.
They look yummmmm.

cookielady

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 12:26 pm

[quote="Clarissa]I just typed it over on the Cookie Board.[/quote]

I have my own board??

Clarissa

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 12:41 pm

cookielady wrote:

I have my own board??

You should have your own board. The Wit and Wisdom of WoC Board.

sarahd

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 12:58 pm

Clarissa wrote:

sarahd wrote:

Clarissa wrote:

sarahd wrote:

Clarissa wrote:

So everything I've said here? I own it. Except the brownie recipe. That is for the world.

So where is that brownie recipe already?! I want to see it! (Unless it's the Double-Decker Mocha one. That one I have already.)

Actually, I don't know where it is on the site. It's for extra-fudgy brownies. If I can't find it, I'll post it again.

Could you, pretty please? I searched for extra-fudgy (extra fudgy, extra fudgie, extra...) brownies and nothing came up.

I just typed it over on the Cookie Board.

Thanks for taking the trouble!

Clarissa

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 1:01 pm

No problem!

Raisin

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 6:59 pm

I have often thought what an field day an academic could have on imamother. I'm sure this woman is not the only one.

chanahlady

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 9:44 pm

amother wrote:

Everyone knows that the information on this site is public. Just its not ethical to come snooping around and post it in a public thesis.

This is absurd. This site is WAY more public than her thesis. Who even knew about her thesis -- much less read the whole thing? Most of us here didn't even know about her thesis. It's not like she put it up on a billboard or something!

Clarissa

Thu, Jul 02 2009, 9:51 pm

It's true. That thing she wrote is being read by many more people here than have probably seen it in real life. We're her subjects and her audience!

Kinneret

Mon, Jul 06 2009, 3:07 pm

I can't say I'm all that bothered about the article itself, but having read Cassandra's comments about the author's participation on the board, it seems to me if she was posting to get reactions, rather than just viewing the normal interactions here, she's tainting the research on which her article (of which I've only read a part) is based. I don't see how any scholar could take it seriously.

This whole thing makes me think of something that happened in college. I had a few classes in the building wherein the psychology department was housed, and the psych students were always doing some kind of "field study" to determine how people react in various kinds of circumstances. It was so common that whenever one of us was approached with a question or comment that seemed a little odd, we'd just respond with "Oh, you're a psych major, right?" We were usually met with a rather crestfallen "Umm, well, yes." It became something of a running joke.

gryp

Mon, Jul 06 2009, 8:08 pm

I didn't even think of that. I don't know who she is, but it's very possible she posted certain things to elicit certain reactions. And then made it into a "study."

Whatever. I don't care one way or another, I just like honest people.

cassandra

Mon, Jul 06 2009, 8:11 pm

I'm not sure about that, but she was very blatantly anti-chareidi in her posts and then attempts to discuss the chariedim in an academic (and therefore unbiased) way. That's a problem.

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