Prompt
A classmate in your computer science course is building a program that predicts which members of an online grief support forum are likely to stop posting. He has collected 40,000 public posts in which people write about losing a loved one. The forum's rules do not forbid collecting posts, and he has removed all usernames, but many posts contain details such as names of relatives, towns and dates that could identify the writer if someone searched for them. The professor has praised the idea, and your classmate asks you to join him as his project partner. The project is worth 40% of your grade. Would you join?
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How to approach this question
What this question tests
- Ethical reasoning
- Empathy and compassion
- Critical thinking
How to approach it
This MMI station on research ethics tests whether you can see the grieving people behind public data, and whether a classmate's enthusiasm, a professor's praise and a big grade can pull you into using their words without their knowledge. Separate what's allowed from what's right, since the forum doesn't forbid collection but its members wrote for a support community. Name the real risk, which is that names of relatives, towns and dates make people findable even without usernames. Weigh options such as joining only if identifying details are removed and the forum agrees, proposing a different dataset, or declining and explaining why. Make a clear choice about joining. If the station shows the community objecting under deadline pressure, decide how much weight their objection carries and look for a workable fallback for the grade.
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