Advantages of experimenting on yourself
Posted: September 17, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Ethics, general, Self-study Leave a comment(This is a repost from April 2013, as I was preparing to bring this experimental data to conferences)
In the coming months, I’ll be taking results from the solo response project to several conferences, and reviewer feedback has me worried about people dismissing this data because I collected the data from myself. I keep getting distracted by these imaginary confrontations with suspicious researchers so it’s time I lay down some concisely-expressed arguments to appease the hypothetical skeptics.
Problem 1: One subject = bad empirical research
I don’t like this one because the premise is wrong, but I’ve gotten it a lot already, so here goes. Read the rest of this entry »
Project planning
Posted: September 17, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Ethics, general, Self-study, Stimuli Leave a comment(This is a repost from during the recording sessions in July 2012)
How else does a grad student get 40+ hours of experimentation time over 20 sessions from one human subject?
I thought someone might have an issue with my idea of using myself, but apparently not. The NYU ethics review office didn’t even want to hear about what responses I’d be recording, or what protocols I’d be following. Maybe they assumed that music is a harmless stimulus, or that I knew I wasn’t allergic to the glue we use to attached electrodes, or that I was very unlikely to sue the school because of research I’d planed myself. I hope they didn’t care because the data collection is happening at another institution, in collaboration with someone who’s standing ethics certificate does cover this type of experiment.
The Solo Response Project 