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Unethical work must be filtered out or flagged

Researchers need guidance on how to handle published work whose ethics have been questioned, argue Graeme D. Ruxton and Tom Mulder.
By
  1. Graeme D. Ruxton

    1. Graeme D. Ruxton is professor in the School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK.

  2. Tom Mulder

    1. Tom Mulder is a student in the School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK.

Illustration by David Parkins

In 2014, an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) described an experiment investigating whether human emotional states can be transferred to others by “emotional contagion”1. Researchers altered the news feeds of almost 700,000 Facebook users to investigate whether the percentage of positive or negative posts they view affects the tone of those they write. According to Facebook, all users consent to this kind of manipulation when they agree to the company’s terms of service.

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Nature 572, 171-172 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02378-x

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