Yes, they were definitely not CIA agents. This was not some scary thing, but it was shady and unethical, especially considering that they were apparently deceiving people. Which, from my own experience, requires a LOT of justification to the IRB. That is why I’m always so so clear that when I’m researching raccoons in my bathing suit, I’m not undercover. I say who I am and the institution I’m with and what I’m doing. I’m just wearing an outfit to make sure everyone feels more comfortable because they are also feeling inherently vulnerable. It would be like if these folks dressed up as homestuck trolls to go to Dashcon. But they weren’t doing that, they were deceiving people.
As far as the funding source being a non-issue, that’s…mmm…I don’t know. It’s. Complicated.
So for everyone’s reference, so much of science is funded by evil people and evil corporations. And we, as scientists, know this, and we have to weigh the pros and cons.
For example: Let’s say that the National Trappers Association will offer funding to biologists to study how eating garbage impacts the coat density and texture of critically endangered pygmy raccoons. They would not doing this because they have a vested interest in conserving the critically endangered pygmy raccoons, they would be doing this because they are seeing that the raccoons they are trapping have had shit coats lately and that’s costing them money. But, by funding research on the pygmy raccoons, they get to figure out if trash is or is not impacting the raccoons’ coats, and also they get to look good because they are helping save an endangered species, giving them more social capital amongst people who hate trappers.
Now, is this kind of evil? Yes. Would I be potentially contributing to the death of more raccoons? Yes. Would I also have a lot of really great information to increase the welfare of pygmy raccoons and common raccoons a like? Yes.
This is the kind of ethical issue that researches frequently face.
As the person above says, CISCO Systems has a vested interest in getting people, companies, and governments on board with smart home/surveillance shit (which plays a big role in the IOT) so they can get those big bucks.
It’s just that the research in this case wasn’t really all that interesting, it was likely just proving something people already knew and needed confirmation for financial/R&D reasons.
But I still think there’s a baseline level of insidiousness. Which there probably is with most major corporations, it’s just frustrating now to see how heavily CISCO has pushed their IOT bullshit recently and in a way that is hurting real people. Below is from a booklet about choosing CISCO for US defense IT.
Additionally, we do know with 100% certainty that the leader of the lab who produced the study that went to Dashcon, L Jean Camp, does directly partner with the military who funds a whole lot of the research.
So it’s like, is it evil? Yeah. But it’s maybe just a little above the baseline level of evil for most science.
Which brings us back to what the above poster said:
It’s the methodology that is really the gross part. They didn’t collect anything super important, they didn’t give any harmful people any info they didn’t already know, but they did act in a way that is unethical.
And also. I still don’t believe they got 106 Dashcon attendees to take a survey. But if they did… that makes me want to do a study on that in itself haha. Maybe the deception really did play a role in that, who knows.