Recognizing and Responding to Legitimate and Illegitimate Researchers

[neededalj]

On the heels of my two posts on neuroscience, I'm going to try one that's straight-up about research.

Over the course of SurveyFail, I have seen two different attitudes towards researchers that bother me. I am *not* singling anyone out individually over this; I do not think anyone in fandom deserves blame for any of the shit that went down.

Comments

[slashpine]

In social research, I would ALWAYS be prepared to show my research proposal, schedule, questionnaire, theoretical orientation, etc., to the community I'm working with.

Lab sciences are less this way, because of all the proprietary/for profit aspects. Health science research because of privacy.

But see, the "model" or theory of the "subjects" is very different in medical/lab sciences, where infamous events like the Tuskegee experiments showed the extreme need for protecting subjects from researchers, from the humanities and many "participatory" or "collaborative" or "action" research projects in the social sciences, where your "subjects" (aka informants) may be leaders and artists and tired of being erased by anonymity as though they are the lab mice and the ethnographer or sociologist is the one who "invented" it all.

Imagine interviewing 5 filmmakers or glass artists and saying, "Of course we won't reveal which one of you said x, y or z." No way! They want to take authorship and be fully as individual as their work. So in social sciences and humanities this becomes a tricky issue of figuring out how to negotiate. So it's getting more common to see an anthropology book on say, "The XXX and Their Worldview" written by Anthropologists Y and Z and "the XXX tribe", or written with 14 people who are informants who preferred to be named.

Should Ogi be quoting fandom people because of their distinctive framing of some issue, and detailed information, and *not* giving attribution? What about quoting people's fics? Most fan authors would say fuck that for a cheap "othering" -- but not many would want their RL name attached.

[jonquil]

"Anthropologists Y and Z and "the XXX tribe""

That is SUCH a cool change in accepted practice.

[slashpine]

Yes, isn't it just? Sure marks a change from back when I was an anthro grad student and it was all "My study group" and My tribe" and those people who contributed all the information were nameless, faceless possessions of Dr. Super Scholar Person.

Kinda like Ogi's attitude toward us!

OTOH, it is a bitch to fit the various collaborative new titles into bibliography softwarez. *g*

[jonquil]

And what do you do when the XXX tribe comes up for tenure? *g*

[slashpine]

Hee! They're usually too busy with *real lives* to care about that crap!

*imagines all one's co-authors showing up at faculty meeting*

LOLZ