Trust Me, I'm a Scientist

An article in the Boston Globe describes a study done by physicists at Northeastern University in which they surreptitiously tracked the movements of 100,000 cell phone users in some undisclosed "industrial nation" in order to look for patterns in peoples' day-to-day movements (see "Study Secretly Tracks Cell Phone Users Outside US" Globe 6/4/2008). The results of their analysis were published in Nature, a highly prestigious science journal. It is disturbing that neither the Northeastern researchers nor the editors at Nature seems to have thought through the ethical questions of this kind of study. The authors admit that they did not consult with an ethics panel.

Most, if not all, institutions of higher learning, as well as many private institutions, maintain some kind of Institutional Review Board (IRB). The purpose of an IRB is to ensure that any research done by the members of an institution (e.g., faculty, students, researchers) is conducted responsibly and ethically, so as not to cause injury, harm, or undue risk (physical, mental, economic, legal, etc.) to humans and even animals. Under federal law, institutions receiving federal funds must in fact maintain an IRB to review research on human subjects - whether medical or behavioral.

These requirements for ethical review are rooted in past abuses. The most notorious include the experimentations done on humans by Nazi physicians during World War II. In the U.S., biomedical researchers are still haunted by the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which Public Health Service researchers withheld medication from patients with syphilis in order to observe the effects of the disease when left untreated. The latter study did not end until it was revealed in 1972. Unfortunately, there are numerous examples of unethical research that have resulted in physical, psychological and even social harm.

Having served on Salem State's IRB, I know that most of the day-to-day work of an IRB is simply determining whether or not a proposed form of research even warrants scrutiny; most do not. However, the point is that it is the responsibility - the prerogative - of the IRB to make that determination. The IRB is an institutional safeguard to catch problems before they develop. Any research involving the collection of sensitive information from or about living persons should pass before the IRB just to make sure.

A spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission pointed out that the kind of 'nonconsensual' tracking done by the Northeastern researchers is in fact illegal in the US. It is illegal in other countries as well. The Nature News article notes that another researcher working on very similar research was not able to do what the Northeastern researchers had done specifically because it was illegal in Germany, where he was based. However, the Northeastern study discloses neither the country in which the study was conducted, nor the cell phone company that supplied the data.

Cesar Hidalgo, a Northeastern physics researcher and coauthor of the study, said, "In the wrong hands the data could be misused ... But in scientists' hands you're trying to look at broad patterns.... We're not trying to do evil things. We're trying to make the world a little better."

Without transparent processes or institutional safeguards, however, such assurances must be suspect.