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Research and data ethics

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rhizae
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Last updated

Consent, harm assessment, and the right to withdraw.

  • ethics
  • consent
  • harm

Ethics review is not a form we complete. It is a set of standing constraints on what we will collect and what we will publish.

Consent covers a stated use for a stated period. It does not transfer to a later project because the records happen to still exist. Re-use requires asking again.

Withdrawal is real

A participant can withdraw, and withdrawal reaches the working copies as well as the published dataset. That is only possible because retention is bounded under our retention rules.

Harm is assessed before publication

Aggregate figures can still identify people in a small population. Before release we ask who could be harmed by a finding and whether the granularity is necessary to the argument. Where it is not, it is reduced.

These constraints shape how studies are designed in the first place; see Research.