Stripping people of their titles and degrees merely for incorrectly claiming that one of their peers has engaged in scientific misconduct would have a chilling effect on progress.
If it can be proven that they made those allegations with nothing more than malicious intent, then sure: punish away. But to go after anyone who incorrectly alleges scientific misconduct is an unspeakably terrible idea.
If they broke the confidentiality of the test subjects, which is against federal law, then they should be stripped of their positions and degrees for that alone. This is not disagreement, this is law breaking. Their should be a chilling effect on people breaking the privacy of subjects, especially those who are underage.
Disproving research is great and noble. Breaking the privacy of human research on which so many depend and is always a touchy subject could have a huge impact on future human research. Endangering further research is the unspeakably terrible idea.
Governing law for medical research subjects is 45 CFR 46.116, the "Common Rule". It does not state privacy is required in studies.
It states that under informed consent, all test subjects must consent to the research and be given in writing "a statement that the study involves research, an explanation of the purposes of the research and the expected duration of the subject’s participation, a description of the procedures to be followed, and identification of any procedures which are experimental", "a description of any reasonably foreseeable risks or discomforts to the subject", "a description of any benefits to the subject or to others which may reasonably be expected from the research", "a disclosure of appropriate alternative procedures or courses of treatment, if any, that might be advantageous to the subject", "a statement describing the extent, if any, to which confidentiality of records identifying the subject will be maintained", and several other things.
Should Dr. Boaler's "statement describing the extent, if any, to which confidentiality of records identifying the subject will be maintained" assure total confidentiality of individual subjects within the study, then she should maintain it, assuming she is complying with all requirements under the Common Rule. However, this issue of individual medical test subjects does not in any way prevent the identification of the particular facility at which the research was done, nor does it in any way prohibit other researchers from discovering that information on their own.
It is extremely interesting that Dr. Boaler believes her work falls under 45 CFR 46.116 since that means she has retained records documenting that she acquired this written consent and made these disclosures to all her test subjects, in addition to a rather vast number of other requirements that are far above and beyond the normal protocol for testing curriculums in schools. It's curious too given that §46.101(b) of the statute specifically excludes educational studies from the requirements:
> (b) Unless otherwise required by department or agency heads, research activities in which the only involvement of human subjects will be in one or more of the following categories are exempt from this policy:
> (1) Research conducted in established or commonly accepted educational settings, involving normal educational practices, such as (i) research on regular and special education instructional strategies, or (ii) research on the effectiveness of or the comparison among instructional techniques, curricula, or classroom management methods.
There can be no doubt that this exclusion applies to the scope of this study given that it is a classroom study on efficacy of math curriculums.
Cool. I agree if they had done the counter studies or worked through channels to analyze the data, all would be fine. Scientific disagreement is scientific.
This type of "I'll pull a bad movie plot" conduct just puts all human-based research in danger or makes it more difficult to get approved.
I believe it's the "aggressively tried to identify the research subjects" that probably warrants a more severe punishment. This is a HUGE no-no in research, as research MUST be, for accurate information, anonymous. His attempt to identify them undermines the very most basic level of good research.
This is a HUGE no-no in research, as research MUST be, for accurate information, anonymous.
Are you sure that this is an invariant characteristic of good research? What is the authority for conducting a research project in a manner that doesn't allow another researcher to check the raw data?
To the contrary, these days there are several very responsible researchers who call for much more open access to research data sets (yes, those could protect subject identities at the individual level while still being traceable to a specific site for follow-up) to promote better science.
I don't have a bone in this fight, but when sample sizes are approaching N=1, you run the risk of evidence tampering, absent anonymity. You also enable political retaliation (ie, principla X supported Y, pull his funding...or oh look at him slip on a sidewalk...woops). Its credible, given the obvious anonymosity (all around), and the politicization of teachers unions (viz, wisconson, chicago, ect) that this consideration be taken into account. Again, this is not a "political point" (partisan sense) as it is a practical one about Naivete, and what desperate people do when they feel threatened.
If they believed that the research had been misrepresented, then the fastest way to confirmation is to evaluate the actual data. Unmasking the source could be one way to do this.
As they were not a party to the agreement of anonymity, I think their actions are fine.
If it can be proven that they made those allegations with nothing more than malicious intent, then sure: punish away. But to go after anyone who incorrectly alleges scientific misconduct is an unspeakably terrible idea.