Subjects and scholars' views on the ethics of political science field experiments

Abstract

Recent controversies raise questions regarding the ethics of political science field experiments. I present here results from a public opinion survey in which subjects and scholars evaluated the acceptability of two hypothetical field experiments. In the survey, the designs were randomly varied to identify the most controversial features. Both scholars and subjects reacted negatively to deception and to experiments without informed consent, especially when the research aims were normatively ambiguous. In some cases, half of the respondents reported that they would rather not be in a typical field experiment without their consent.