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Comment by jackvalentine | Hacker News Reader

Would it be fair to say that by being forced to participate in a study you aren’t really giving your consent? Even though I presume you get to find/pick the studies you participate in.

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Its not just fair, i'd say its accurate.

Here's another interesting phenomenon: a certain personality type (of which I may or may not count my self among) will deliberately supply false data which attempts to invalidate what we perceive as your study goal when forced to participate against our wills in this way. Its a small rebellion against an academic system that doesn't respect us or intellectual integrity, but is focused on pumping out shoddy research on unwilling participants.

Turn academics into a game and thats how it'll be treated.

I remember this practice of almost-compelled research participation even in the introductory undergraduate Psychology 101 course, and in that class (which included high school students and tons of non-majors) there was a lot of the attitude you describe.

Generally, there are "alternative" assignments that you can do instead, but they're usually somewhat more annoying.

In my case, we had no alternative. If you chose to study psychology at my uni, you had to do this.

Was there some choice of what studies? So that if you object to a particular one you could decline... if you object to all of them then I guess you should study something else.

I can only speak for the American university I work for, but here, every Informed Consent form explicitly states that participants can withdraw at any time for any reason and still get credit.

That seems unfair and wrong. I'm forced to have a job to pay my bills and I get to pick my job but that doesn't exactly mean it's without my consent.

I also have the choice of not working or wiring some other job.

I would say it's a responsibility not supporting forced on people against their will. Two very different things.

I'm talking about the concept of "voluntary informed consent" in the context of the ethics of research studies. It's a far more specific thing than 'oh our capitalist system requires our labour or we'll freeze to death'.

Voluntary informed consent generally requires that participation is completely voluntary, that any rewards for participating don't cause undue influence on the participant's decision to participate and that there will be no consequences or loss of benefits for not participating.

I would argue that to reach this standard the requirement to participate in studies to complete your degree would need to be known before enrollment (likely the case) and the actual study you'll be participating in needs to be identified (almost definitely not the case). Anything less and students will find themselves financially and personally committed to a course of education without truly knowing what they'll be required to do to pass.

If you're interested in the topic, take a look at this neat little booklet: https://oprs.usc.edu/files/2017/04/Informed-Consent-Booklet-...

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