Covert Research Ethics

Abstract

Covert research has a mixed reputation within the scientific community. Some are unsure of its moral worth, others would proscribe it entirely. This reputation stems largely from a lack of knowledge about the reasons for choosing the covert method. In this chapter, these reasons will be reconstructed in detail and all the elements that will allow one to judge the level of ethicality of covert research will be laid out for the reader. In particular, the chapter will answer the following questions: What harms can result from covert research to the subjects participating in the research? Is covert research necessarily deceptive? In which cases is it ethically permissible for a researcher to deceive? What is the scientific added value of the covert research, that is, what does covert research discover that overt research does not? What are the risks to researchers acting undercover? Finally, some suggestions will be offered to research ethics reviewers to help in their appraisal of covert research.

Informed Consent and Debriefing When Deceiving Participants: A Systematic Review of Research Ethics Guidelines

“…As a first strategy, the recommendations about finetuning the deceptive message roughly corresponded to the general recommendations in the academic literature, but they did not clarify how this could be operationalized in more specific contexts (e.g., should we strive to retain sufficient truthful characteristics in a researcher's fabricated identity for a covert study?) (Cunliffe & Alcadipani, 2016; Marzano, 2021; Pascual-Leone et al, 2010; Wilson, 2015). Specific arguments or conditions for this strategy were not found and the approach to answering questions in deceptive research was rarely mentioned.…”