In reply to Stan Klein.

Thanks Cameron, for a great post and Stan for some interesting comments to follow. I hope you'll permit me an extended response.

As someone who works across the social sciences, arts, humanities and now collaborates with clinically oriented Psychologists this thread reflects some interesting differences in the ways in which knowledge is created, used, stored, disseminated and how it is valued and then, ultimately how data is archived, managed or indeed in some cases destroyed across disciplines. This, as Cameron points out, ultimately also relates to the ethical imperative that as researchers we share our research outcomes responsibly and consider the differences between academic freedom and freedom of speech.

Other threads woven into this discussion include disciplinary differences in ethical considerations and how knowledge is constructed. As your 'disciplinary other' I will try and unpick these a bit, or as we say in my discipline 'problematize'.

Firstly, of course I should clarify that in the social sciences, arts and humanities books (ethnographies, monographs, academically researched biographies) are in fact academic outputs. This of course is not the case in many sciences.

There is also, of late, a new interdisciplinary cross- over between ethnography, creative life writing and investigative journalism which raises some interesting ethical and integrity issues: are researchers based at Universities legally and ethically subject to the same laws and rules as journalists? Journalists are often protected by certain press regulations whereas researchers must abide by ethical codes of conduct as set out by their institutions and national bodies such as, for example, the UK Research Integrity Office.

This does not sit comfortably where the topic of the 'reporting' is illicit activities and where the data collected, again, might cause much harm if shared freely and openly. At what point is the 'good' of sharing overshadowed ethically by the detriment and harm caused? These are the questions that are truly routed in ethical debate, and at times conflict with national legislation.

The above also of course impacts on our so prized academic freedom: are there times when researchers perhaps ought not to publish something and forgo the academic accolades in favor of preserving the safety and wellbeing of our research participants? A question that was regularly raised during my work with Indigenous Australians, where historically used by paternalistic governments to underpin oppressive legislation. Where does this leave academic freedom and how does this intersect with the uses to which our words and research outputs are put? A question with which government struggles daily and has encouraged researchers to engage with.

Secondly, Alice Goffman's work is routed in sociological research. Data, in sociology, can consist of personal data, which as was pointed out earlier can do harm if it were made publicly available, to those who provided said data to the researcher. In terms of integrity therefore, at what point do we think the 'do no harm' clause trumps the 'thou shalt keep and share thy data responsibly' clause? This question regularly rears its complicated head at my research ethics and integrity committee.

You may then ask: Is it actually necessary though to destroy the data completely? Would not an embargo suffice? This is where time frames matter, as pointed out by Stan. When is 'short', 'too short'? In the social sciences there can be (and here I must stress that 'the social sciences' are rather diverse and what holds true for one area of inquiry, may not do for another, as I am sure is the case in the sciences).

'Data' may include personal information about actual living people and as such is subject to the data protection act, which, as we know, will vary across countries. In the UK personal data can be kept up to 7 years, whereas other forms of research data can be kept for longer. Goffman is based in the USA. Not sure what the law requires there, but it might explain her 'decision' to destroy her data after what seems like a short period of time. In the USA they have notoriously strict independent review boards (IRBs) which may well have mandated this destruction. It would not be the first time that social scientists have been asked, against their better judgement, to destroy their data as a result of research integrity procedures inappropriately applied.

In Sociology and Anthropology this becomes a tricky issue because often your data is a mixture of personal information as well as material that can be anonymised, should anonymisation be appropriate. Those social scientists using quantitative methods such as surveying will usually take a lot of care to provide ways in which they can disaggregate the personal information from the anonymised data sets so that the anonymised results can be shared and archived for a longer period of time and the personal data destroyed after, in the UK, 7 years.

For those researchers undertaking ethnography, this issue is trickier. Anonymisation is hard to do, especially with the internet and in fact most good Universities will supply training in anonymisation techniques as part of their research methods and ethics training. This may well include data destruction. In other cases, particularly anthropology, anonymisation is truly inappropriate and data destruction advocated against. Particularly in anthropology there are many, many cases where anonymisation would be in direct opposition to what the research participants would want as it conflicts with their Indigenous rights to culture or copyright and IP legislation and so on.

Lastly, the issue of reproducibility. Always a fun subject because it highlights nicely the two camps in which often people find themselves: the quantitative researchers and the qualitative ones. Many qualitative researchers, including ethnographers, have dismissed the idea that objective research even exists in their field and freely acknowledge their outcomes are context-sensitive, not reproducible, but therefore no less valuable.

Much can be gleaned theoretically, methodologically and otherwise from context-specific case-studies. Equally, some philosophers and science and technology researchers such as Karl Popper and Latour argue that in many ways science is not as objective as it thinks it is. The construction of the scientific paradigm and facts is as much a product of cultural epistemological preferences, funding climates, resources, institutional/ national research cultures, human expertise, the state of technology etc. and personalities: in other words, context-sensitive.

I know that many scientist friends of mine happily concur that this is the case, but do not think of themselves as being less ethical or indeed less competent as researchers. What they tend to do however, if preface their work with the necessary caveats to ensure they are transparent about the limitations of their work. It is this transparency and to my mind, scientific rigor that lies at the heart of this, something pointed out by Cameron above as well.

Good ethnographers do the same: they do not pretend to be objective, or that their work can be reproduced and they let their audience know this. This, I argue though makes their work no less rigorous or less ethical and in some ways non-problematical (see here I must dissent from Cameron's assumption that all ethnographers find lack of reproducibility a problem: many do not find this a challenging issue at all).

Obviously this reproducibility of crops up to a lesser extent with those social scientists working in quantitative areas (although there are still questionable practices in evidence which I shan't address here) so again I should emphasize that as with science research, the 'disciplinary other' is rather diverse and in fact does not always unanimously agree on what counts as 'appropriate ethical conduct/ sharing' and how data and information should be responsibly shared in public contexts.

As researchers I think, it is important therefore that, no matter what discipline we work in we should use our words carefully; try and assess the difference been how they might be perceived by those unfamiliar with our areas of inquiry and how insiders would grasp them; to explain things clearly without misrepresenting the facts and to freely acknowledge any caveats there might be in relation to any results we produce and to share our data responsibly so as not to cause harm of any kind. This might mean that we cannot shout as loudly about our research successes as we'd like or might mean we have to destroy our research data earlier than might seem appropriate, but then research should be for the common good, not personal glory.

That said, these things are easier said (or written about) than done, and I consider them to be a daily challenge where the practicalities of being a researcher in today's climate are concerned. Current situations in the academe mitigate against good behavior. However. it should not stop us from at least trying, me thinks.