Page - 46 - in Radical Solutions and Open Science - An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education

48 D.Griffiths productscannotknowif thecompanyisnolongercarryingoutsuchwork,or if such analyticswork is simply not being reported. The same is true, of course, for other companies.Thequestion foreducational institutions iswhether it is ethical tomake useofeducationalserviceswhicharenotsufficiently transparent in theiruseofdata, whendoingsomeansthat theycannotensurethat their institutionalcodesofpractice forboth researchethicsandLAarebeing respected. TheissuesraisedbythePearsonresearchareaparticularcaseofawiderprocess. AsdiscussedbyZuboff (2019p.299–305) the issuewasbrought to prominenceby a paper in Nature by University of California and Facebook researchers leverag- ingcompanydata, entitled“A61-million-personexperiment in social influenceand politicalmobilization”(Bondetal.,2012).TheeditorofNaturesaid inan interview that Iwas concerned…until I queried the authors and they said their local institutional review boardhadapprovedit—andapparentlyonthegroundsthatFacebookapparentlymanipulates people’sNewsFeedsall the time. (Lafrance,2019) The editor also explained that the reviewboardhad approved the studybecause ituseda ‘pre-existingdataset’.ProfessorChrisChambers summarised theconcerns ofmany that theFacebookstudypaints adystopian future inwhichacademic researchers escapeethical restrictionby teamingupwithprivate companies to test increasinglydangerousorharmful interventions. (Chambers, 2014) If, as I have argued, LAwholly or partly represents the extension ofOR to the Education sector, then a primary ethical concern for the sector should be the dis- ruptionwhich this extension is causing to researchethicswithin education, and the likely implications of its future impact on education and educational research. A failure to conduct this discussionwouldmean that, despite all the good intentions and reflection in the LA community, the ethics of LAwould be those of a power grab: ‘we grant ourselves an ethical exemption becausewe can, and let the social consequences fall as theywill’. 3.4.2 EthicalWaiversandExemptions Themedicalfieldhasbeenconfrontedwithverysimilarethical issuestothoseraised byLA, but for rather longer because until recentlymuchmore datawas generated in the health sector than in education. Inmany jurisdictions, including theUnited States, the sameproblemthatwehave identified inLAarises, i.e. decidingwhether an investigationqualifiesas ‘research’ (which isgovernedbyethical reviewboards) or as ‘quality improvement’ OR (which has a waiver or exemption from ethical review), as discussed byGoldstein et al. (2018). Taylor et al. (2010) describe how in the 1990s “questionswere raised as towhether quality improvement initiatives ought tobeconsideredhumansubject researchandreviewedandregulatedassuch”, and theyprovideanumberofexamples.