The Importance of External Oversight in Social Science

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I think we can somewhat draw a distinction here between research that on its face, there's a clear risk to participants. We're going to need people to be reviewing whether these experiments are justified and whether participants are getting sufficient protection with very different kinds of research. And it certainly seems like people are so good at rationalizing that it is hard to trust the researchers themselves to make like the right judgment about risks. Yeah. You know, just we just have so many examples of this where, you know, we humans think we're doing something that's totally fine.

What are the best strategies for improving ourselves? How are line managers useful? Why does Rob prefer long-form content for the 80,000 Hours podcast? What are the sorts of things humans value and why? In what ways do research ethics considerations fail to achieve their stated objectives? Why are prediction markets useful?

Rob Wiblin is the Head of Research at 80,000 Hours where he investigates how people can do more good in the course of their career and produces a long-form interview show called the 80,000 Hours Podcast. He studied genetics and economics in Australia before moving to the UK to help develop the emerging field of effective altruism. You can learn more about Rob at robwiblin.com, learn more about his research work at 80000hours.org, and follow him on social media at @robertwiblin.

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