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#boycottACE and Institutional Corruption

The headline first, even though it buries the lede: ACE 2018, the 15th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, has invited former Breitbart News executive chairman and former Donald Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon as a keynote speaker. ACE is a smaller, but long-running academic conference on, as it says on the tin, entertainment technology. If you ask: Why does a smaller academic conference on entertainment technology invite Bannon as a keynote speaker, you are not alone. The announcement has led the second keynote speaker, play researcher Peter Gray, to withdraw from the conference, and numerous researchers to publicly call for boycotting ACE under the #boycottACE hashtag.

ACE 2018 general chair and steering committee chair Adrian David Cheok justifies the invitation by arguing that Bannon has a point worth publicly debating: his policy of economic nationalism may be beneficial to workers in computing entertainment. Based on his past statements, one may assume that Cheok views responses like #boycottACE as left-wing thought police. As Cheok put it in response to the New Yorker festival removing Bannon as a headliner:

Leftists are such weak sissies, and against free speech! They can't stand anyone not following leftist dogma and propaganda! https://t.co/DW0azcpyfu

Now one may take different stances on Popper's paradox of tolerance. One may also hold different views on whether freedom of speech (as a constitutional right of citizens against the state), communicative rationality, or the free exchange of ideas as a precondition of science as organised scepticism extend to the academy giving an equal stage to any idea and speaker, no matter the evidence base or social signalling involved. Personally, I think it is naive at best and disingenuous at worst to claim you can invite the galleon figure of the alt-right to have a debate about economic nationalism for computing entertainment without nobilitating everything else the specific speaker also stands for, and without furthering it by giving it a stage, the imprimatur of the institutions you work through, and presumably, a conference ticket fee-funded honorarium. (If you are serious about the issue not the person, why not invite two scholars with deep subject matter expertise debating the issue, such as Sam Pryke?)

Ad hominems and faux-free speech

But that’s not the point. No matter your stance on this, none of it justifies the ad hominem attacks Adrian David Cheok levelled against Yoram Chisik, one of the steering board members who stepped down from ACE, interestingly before the announcement of Bannon’s keynote. https://imgur.com/a/9pHXoBM.

It is simply inexcusable, anathema to the behaviour we as academics should model and champion to our children, students, and fellow citizens. Sadly, it is also not the first time Cheok responded to critique of his work not by embracing free speech, communicative rationality, organised scepticism, or any such thing, and engaging in dialogue, but with direct personal attacks in all caps that seem modelled on Donald Trump. And when being called out on it, again discounted any such critique as free speech-impinging thought police.

Worst rank @FDGconf only accept #AltLeft people. They HATE others! They are ANTI-FREE SPEECH ELITISTS! Don't attend this rubbish conference!

https://twitter.com/adriancheok/status/901608141154131968

For the avoidance of doubt: You cannot demand free speech and then, when faced with critique, label that critique evil and silencing instead of engaging with it in good faith. And the second you resort to personal attack, you demonstrate you are not genuinely interested in good faith debate. But that’s not the point either.

Academic Institutions, Compromised

Here’s the question that #boycottACE puts in my head: How come that a contentious keynote speaker was chosen and announced apparently uncontested? How come the conference chair can attack former conference organisers personally uncontested? How come we hear nothing from within the conference organisation itself – the steering committee, organising committee, and underlying organisation hosting the event?

In today’s post-truth world more than ever, the academy is one of our institutional bulwarks of truth. To function as that, it needs trust – both trust within (between academics) and trust from the outside. To give but the simplest example: We have to take it on trust that people actually did the empirical work they report in their papers. Our peer review system is not set up to spot instances where people don’t. And where the public is made to distrust science on issues like climate change, the consequences are real. Trust erodes if an institution is corrupted, that is, if the institution is “systematically responsive to an influence other than the influence intended”, to use the definition from Lawrence Lessig’s useful new primer on institutional corruption, America, Compromised.

I would argue that most academics’ implicit or explicit notion of the ideal organisational function of academic institutions is communicative rationality: not power, money, emotion, convenience – no, only the best-founded argument should influence our decisions, and we can establish which one is best founded in a free, reasoned, good faith exchange of argument and evidence. One major safeguard of this process are academic institutions like scholarly societies and journals that ground almost any decision in a non-optional exchange of argument, bottoming out either in deliberative consensus or majority vote: every paper and thesis is assigned multiple reviewers, every decision made by boards assembling multiple people. This is often supremely inefficient, for certain, but it institutes safeguards against the unintended influence of anything but publicly defensible reason – anything such as individual opinion, groupthink, or confirmation bias. Many things are more efficiently run by a benign enlightened dictator, but that’s the point of institutions: to protect against undue influence no matter the bums that fill its seats.

In this light, I am thankful that the former ACE steering committee member and general chair Yoram Chisik released a full public record about why he and other long-term steering committee members stepped back from ACE in August, notably well before the announcement that Steve Bannon was invited as keynote speaker. What his statement reports is an academic institution with no checks and balances, no safeguards of communicative rationality. Instead, we find a single individual (Adrian David Cheok) as the sole person in control of the nonprofit organisation running ACE, taking unilateral and in-transparent decisions as the conference chair, without first exposing them to internal debate, even against requests and majority votes of the steering committee:

replacing two programme chairs;

not giving access to the conference’s peer review system on request of the steering committee members;

co-locating the conference with another

This led Chisik and two colleagues to resign from the ACE steering committee, as, in his words, they found themselves “in the unenviable position in which [they] can no longer guarantee the independence of the conference or the quality of its review and publication process.” In other words, a situation where they can’t guarantee the academic institution ACE is not corrupt

In addition, Chisik states that ACE presents a false front of endorsement and quality review by listing several researchers as program committee members who never explicitly consented to being listed as such. Indeed, at least two colleagues of mine, Andres Lucero and Staffan Bjork, publicly stated that their names were falsely listed on the program committee lists of ACE 2017 and 2018. This may seem like a minor detail, but trust within science as in society does flow through personal networks: seeing a trusted colleague listed as part of the committees of an academic conference or journal sends a strong signal that if I trust them, I can trust that institution.

The issue, then, is not that Steve Bannon keynotes an academic tech conference. Nor is it that an academic sympathises with Bannon’s political views – that is Cheok’s right as a fellow adult human, and can be discussed in good faith debate if both sides are willing. The issue is that ACE as an academic institution is corrupt in Lessig’s sense, “systematically responsive to an influence other than the influence intended”, namely the opinions and views of a single individual: institutionally, its bodies are unable (and currently, seem unwilling) to reign in this undue influence. The issue is that this incident further erodes trust in academic institutions, in an age when we as academics need to do everything we can to restore it.

#boycottACE

– Lana Yarosh, Death, Delays, and Doubts of Academic Projects

/The ecological validity problem of play research in a nutshell cartoon.

In the tradition of good ole’ PainStation (and Russian Roulette), several recent games have toyed with the social norm that game play shall have no serious physical consequences. Now I played PainStation myself with glee and enjoyment, because the consequence was still non-serious enough, but this one ...

1041uuu

codingconduct

(ノ_<。)

#wabisabi

Atheist temple architecture.

The Islamic State wins prestigious Turner Prize for modern art

The Islamic State has sensationally won the prestigious 2015 Turner Prize for its conceptual art piece ‘Smashing Mosul Museum To Pieces: Death To The Infidels.’

“By demolishing priceless 3,000 year old statues with sledge hammers, ISIS is asking: ‘What is art?’, while recontextualising normative art as transgressive, daring and counter cultural,” said the chairman of the Turner Prize jury, Sir Nicholas Serota. “I was very moved by their performance.”

The pulverised pieces of rock left by the Islamic State were later purchased by modern art collector Charles Saatchi for $5 million for an installation entitled: ‘Lumps Of Rock In A Wheelbarrow, 2015′.

The Turner Prize, considered the greatest prize in modern art, has previously been won by artists using elephant dung, a dead shark and a garden shed reimagined as art.

“In destroying this ‘art’, the Islamic State has liberated it from bourgeoise, middle class concepts of ‘beauty’ and invited us to examine pig ignorance as an artistic expression in itself,” said Serota, while being held at gunpoint by the Islamic State winning team.

This is the first Middle Eastern winner of the Turner Prize since the Taliban took the prize in 2001 for blowing up 30 foot high Buddha statues in an installation entitled ‘Blowing Up 30 Ft High Buddhist Statues: Because They’re Buddhist’.

Accepting this year’s award, the Islamic State’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi thanked the jury and said he and the art team would soon be unveiling their latest work: ‘Beheading The Turner Prize Judges: Death To Anyone Who Looks Suspiciously Homosexual’.

The Pan-Arabia Inquirer, March 3, 2015

Jordan Speer's cover art for The Arcade Review is just -- bubblegum.

Candyland and the Nature of the Absurd. As Jaakko Stenros put it: "I'm with Sartre on this one although he's a griefer."

Technology encourages farmers to move too aggressively toward easy-to-grow and easy-to-sell crops that are more easily measured by instruments, rather than keeping some diversity in the fields — an age-old hedge against bad weather and pests

Quention Hardy, Working the Land and the Data

– A nice example for the codification of conduct: instead of adjusting computers to better fit us, we are adjusting ourselves to them.

I love not having to notice stuff—and, even more than not noticing, I love not having to articulate what I’ve not noticed. Whereas somebody like Updike seemed to live every day at an amazing level of noticingness.

Geoff Dyer, The Art of Nonfiction

Transmedia convergence.

pierregrassou

codingconduct

Collection of robots saying “fuck this shit” (via pierregrassou)

The Facebook Loophole

As corporations become data powerhouses, will researchers be tempted to evade ethics reviews by offloading data collection to them? (Reblogged from Medium)

The media storm over Facebook’s recently published emotion contagion study has given the public an unlikely primer in research ethics: It is refreshing to find TechCrunch or Forbes discuss esoteric matters like “informed consent” or “Institutional Review Boards (IRB)”, otherwise confined to the late night programming of public broadcasters and the everyday sorrows of academics.

But beyond the question whether the study was legal (probably), ethical (your call), or a smart thing to do (…), it raises a bigger question: Is it a glimpse into an ungainly, gaping hole in current research ethics, opened by industry research and cozy industry-university relations?

The Cornell Double Whammy

A lot of the present kerfuffle revolves around the two university researchers, Jeffrey Hancock and Jamie Guillory, who co-authored the article and were employed at Cornell University when the study was conducted. As such, when they run studies with human subjects, they are typically subject to review and approval by an IRB, which typically requires getting informed consent from all participants. A nuisance for sure, but a critical safety check to ensure that the freedom of research doesn’t veer into things like theMilgram experiment, the Tusgekee syphilis study — or people freaking out that their social network of lacking choice unwittingly manipulated their emotions. Many academics feel that that no IRB in the world would have let the Facebook study happen as it did, certainly not without informed consent. So how could it still happen?

Enter Cornell University, which on June 30 released a curt media statement:

[The involved researchers] analyzed results from previously conducted research by Facebook into emotional contagion among its users. Professor Hancock and Dr. Guillory did not participate in data collection and did not have access to user data. Their work was limited to initial discussions, analyzing the research results and working with colleagues from Facebook to prepare the peer-reviewed paper […]. Because the research was conducted independently by Facebook and Professor Hancock had access only to results — and not to any data at any time — Cornell University’s Institutional Review Board concluded that he was not directly engaged in human research and that no review by the Cornell Human Research Protection Program was required.

Cryptic? Here’s the background: The US Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects (“Common Rule”), which Cornell (and most other US research universities) abide by, requires that studies involving human subjects are reviewed and pre-approved by an IRB. The media statement appeals to two exemptions from the Common Rule — a legalistic double whammy:

1. "Look 'ma, no hands!" - That little word "engage"

Technically, Cornell argues, their researchers weren’t even “engaged in human research”. According to the non-binding guidelines of the US Office of Human Research Protections,

an institution is considered

engaged in a particular non-exempt human subjects research project when its employees or agents for the purposes of the research project obtain: (1) data about the subjects of the research through intervention or interaction with them; (2) identifiable private information about the subjects of the research; or (3) the informed consent of human subjects for the research.

The study article itself states in its footnotes that the university researchers “designed research” and “wrote the paper” — the research was “performed” and data “analyzed” only by the Facebook employee.

2. Found Footage: "existing data"

Note the phrase “previously conducted research” in the media statement. The Common Rule states that research is exempt from IRB review and approval if it involves

“the collection or study of existing data, documents, records, pathological specimens, or diagnostic specimens, if these sources are publicly available or if the information is recorded by the investigator in such a manner that subjects cannot be identified”.

Thus, the study could have gotten around IRB approval and informed consent if Facebook had already done the study on its own as part of its constant service tinkering, and after the fact the university researchers came along and said: Gee, we could use the data you generated for a nice journal paper. Again, the article itself suggests this as well:

“Which content is shown or omitted in the News Feed is determined via a ranking algorithm that Facebook continually develops and tests in the interest of showing viewers the content they will find most relevant and engaging. One such test is reported in this study: A test of whether posts with emotional content are more engaging.”

In sum, Cornell says all was kosher because, look, Facebook obtained the data: We never “engaged” in any research here, we just analysed and wrote about “existing data”!

Given that the Cornell researchers “designed [the] research” (which happens before you run a study — one would hope) and engaged in “initial discussions” with the Facebook author who ran it, this is not just disingenuous: If this became common practice, it would tear a massive hole into the ethical checks and bounds on human subject research.

The Buddy Shortcut

University and industry researchers collaborate all the time, and researchers regularly switch camps from academic halls to industry labs and back. Companies like Google, Microsoft, or Facebook all have research departments that sponsor and present at academic conferences, complete with recruitment booths to hire PhDs and post-docs fresh from the mint.

If the logic of Cornell’s defence were to gain foothold, at such an event, university researchers could over a beer with their industry friends “just have an idea for a study” — and three months later magically find an email by their industry pal, telling them that “what a coincidence”, the data s/he gathered provides just the right material for the study the university colleague had in mind: shouldn’t we write a paper about this together? Whenever there is a topic that interests both company and university researchers, the latter could conveniently circumnavigate all those pesky IRB and informed consent processes by handing over the “data obtaining” part to their less regulated counterparts.

I perfectly agree with danah boyd that IRBs and informed consent do not equal ethical deliberation: they are often treated as a formality to protect universities from legal liability. Researchers often try to game them to do what they want to do anyhow. The Facebook study highlights one (new?) way of gaming the system and thus only illustrates, as boyd holds, that “We need ethics to not just be tacked on, but to be an integral part of how everyone thinks about what they study, build, and do.”

Update (July 4): The Corporate Vacuum

Let’s shift focus from the scientists to the Facebook employee. The editor-in-chief of the journal that published the study, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), just released an “Editorial Expression of Concern” that will be printed in the same issue as the study itself. It states:

Obtaining informed consent and allowing participants to opt out are best practices in most instances under the US Department of Health and Human Services Policy for the Protection of Human Research Subjects (the “Common Rule”). Adherence to the Common Rule is PNAS policy, but as a private company Facebook was under no obligation to conform to the provisions of the Common Rule when it collected the data used by the authors, and the Common Rule does not preclude their use of the data. Based on the information provided by the authors, PNAS editors deemed it appropriate to publish the paper. It is nevertheless a matter of concern that the collection of the data by Facebook may have involved practices that were not fully consistent with the principles of obtaining informed consent and allowing participants to opt out.

This statement is not fully correct: The PNAS “Editorial Policy” sets out its own demands for studies published in it, including “Research involving Human and Animal Participants and Clinical Trials must have been approved by the author’s institutional review board” and “For experiments involving human participants, authors must also include a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all participants.” These are similar to the Common Rule, but don’t demand adherence to it. Why is that important? Because a Facebook employee — Adam Kramer — was a co-author, and indeed the lead author of the paper. Following thearticle, he “performed research”: he did not pick up “existing data” somehow “lying around” in Facebook.

The Cornell press statement logic allows scientists to publish on Common Rule-exempt data as long as they pay formal lip service to it being “existing”. The PNAS logic is even more troublesome: Because Facebook is a private entity not beholden to the Common Rule, it is apparently also not beholden to the editorial policies of scientific journals if its employees wish to publish in them. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that the study had been single-authored by the Facebook employee. Following PNAS, this may be “a matter of concern”, but it would be permissible for him/her to run the study and publish its results in the PNAS, all without review and approval of an ethics board, and without informed consent. (At most, Facebook author A would need a university researcher sidekick B later exempting A’s data collection as B’s secondary use — or maybe find a Facebook employee C who folds A’s research study into C’s ‘business as usual’ A/B test, so that A could use it as “existing data”. The Common Rule and journal policies typically require IRB approval from all involved institutions/researchers to prevent this kind passing the buck.)

In Sum

As I’ve argued previously, this is just one outgrowth of digital networked technology enabling new entrants to engage in activities that were previously confined to an elect few — like large-scale human subject research. One major issue is that these new entrants are typically not subject to existing laws and regulations (no Common Rule for Facebook), and fervently resist being subjected to them (see Uber, AirBnB, etc.). That is, they claim that somehow, “because new technology, old rules don’t apply.” And as the Facebook emotion study shows, not only does that create an unregulated Wild West for new actors: It also seduces old actors to weasel themselves out of their laws and regulations.

[L]et’s preserve the term ‘sharing,’ reserving it not for anti-economic niceness, but for economic relations that have a social thickness to them. [...] In the end, sharing is about the messy negotiation of access to goods, goods that in the name of sustainability become more scarce. Capitalism is an alienated way of handling those negotiations; sharing forces you to negotiate with aliens.

Cameron Tonkinwise, Sharing you can Believe in

This reminds me of Marc Hassenzahl's and Matthias Laschke's "Aesthetic of Friction". To them, "pleasurable troublemakers" foster deliberation, delight, and lasting change. To Tonkinwise, the social friction of sharing services like AirBnB infuses the owned-goods-based, Amazon.com-supplied "asocial suburban bunkers" with some semblance of "mechanical solidarity".

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