Deception by design. Characteristics and acceptability of research strategies that intentionally mislead research participants

Research strategies that purposefully mislead research participants have been used for a long time. Although methodologies that use deception in their design could potentially increase relevant scientific knowledge in a huge number of areas, there is a lack of understanding about the conditions under which such a methodology is justified and a lack of clarity about what constitutes an appropriate context in which research participants can be deceived. Therefore, the use of deception in research studies has been heavily criticized because of ethical concerns regarding its use; because of the lack of proper informed consent and the fact of misleading the participant to the real purpose of the study. More recently, the development of the General Data Protection Regulation challenges the use of deception even more.Therefore, the general aims of our research are (a) to provide a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of research in which deception is being used, (b) to articulate more clearly conditions under such research is justified and (c) to develop ethical safeguards and conditions under which such a study could take place. The proposed research is important as there is a lack of understanding about the conditions under which deception in a research design might be justified and a lack of clarity about what constitutes an appropriate context in which research participants could potentially be deceived.This project will allow (1) to systematically identify research studies that used deception; (2) to investigate the experiences of researchers who have used a methodology in which deception was used; and (3) to systematically map research ethics guidelines and recommendations in order to analyse to what extent and the ways in which recommendations deal with the use of deception in research. The research activities developed in this proposal will lead to the development of further research activities in this area. The planned research activities and the active role of the research team in ethics committees will lead to the development of policy recommendation that will guide future research projects that want to integrate deception within the design of the study, and will provide useful instruments for research ethics committees to assess such research protocols.

Keywords:Deception, Research methodology, Minimal risk, Informed consent, Ethics committees

Disciplines:Bioethics