You’ll remember back in the fall we reported on three political scientists from Stanford and Dartmouth who stumbled and bumbled their way into all kinds of controversy in Montana with a research project pegged to state Supreme Court elections. Now the state’s commissioner of political practices has released his report on the fiasco, and found that Stanford and Dartmouth are on the hook for violating state elections laws. Here’s our complete report on his decision, including the backstory on the research project for those who missed this back in the fall.
Beyond being excruciatingly embarrassing for the universities and the researchers, the decision raises a slew of questions regarding social science research practices that I expect will be much discussed in academic circles. It created an uproar among political scientists at the time and is likely to renew that debate now. Namely, Stanford and Dartmouth were supposed to register as political committees to do this project? Really? I think that points to how flawed the project was in its conception and execution rather than a broader regulatory push to turn political scientists into super PACs or some other such nonsense. The maxim about bad cases making bad law almost certainly applies here. You can imagine poli sci colleagues around the country giving a big “Thanks, guys” to the trio in this case for mucking things up so completely.
But here’s another insight into the case just for TPM readers. After yesterday’s decision was released, I received an email from Jeremy Johnson, a political science professor at Carroll College in Helena. Johnson was hired by Jonathan Motl, the state’s commissioner of political practices, to help him unravel the case. Johnson issued his own report to Motl which is referenced and included in the final report. But Johnson sent the below letter for us to publish with some of his insights on the case and his takes on the research issues this case raises.
Dear David,
I am attaching the decision released today by the Commissioner of Political Practices of the State of Montana, Jonathan Motl, regarding McCulloch v. Stanford and Dartmouth. I am a professor of political science at Carroll College in Helena, MT and Motl asked me to comment on the vetting process employed by the researchers. I am not going to reiterate most of the main points of this decision. I would like to respond, however, to some of
the interesting points made by political scientists on Talking Points Memo. [Full disclosure: I had one of the commentators, Daniel Carpenter, for a class at Harvard University in the spring semester of 2007.]As noted on Talking Points Memo political scientists hold various opinions about the Stanford-Dartmouth flyer project. On the one hand, some believe the only problem with the study was the use of the Great Seal while others take a very different view and thought the researchers were engaged in academic malpractice. There were also plenty of views between those two poles. I realize none of the commentators were privy to the inner workings of the IRB process at Dartmouth. Many of them would probably agree that the researchers should have submitted the Montana study for IRB approval and not just the prototype New Hampshire study that sought to answer a different research question. I also realize few (and perhaps none) of the commentators considered the legal issues surrounding express advocacy and Montana campaign practice laws. I am going to leave aside those legal issues and focus my remarks on what most of the discussion by political scientists entailed—the ethics of the project.
The obvious ambiguity many had about ethical considerations also came across in the official responses as noted in my report. Before election day (although not before early voting by mail), Stanford and Dartmouth sent an apology to Montana voters who received the flyer stating, “We recognize the purpose of elections is to enable our democratic system to operate, and that no research project should risk disrupting an election we genuinely regret that it was sent and we ask Montana voters to ignore the mailer.” However, in a letter to the Commissioner dated December 18, 2014 Stanford had a very different response. It stated, “the use of the seal was a mistake, and the primary reason why Stanford agreed with your office to mail the letter.” Interestingly, the letter of apology to the voters did not even mention the use of the seal. It almost seems that Stanford was having two different conversations, one of contrition for public consumption in Montana and one for the Commissioner of Political Practices where issues relating to disrupting the election were of far less salience.
I believe the obvious disconnect of what actually was wrong with the Montana flyer project is attributable to the systemic lack of regard for the broader community. This is a flaw in both the IRB process and how we, as scholars, think. I concluded that even if the researchers had carefully followed all appropriate procedures in vetting their project through the IRB—which they did not—it is likely that the Dartmouth IRB would have approved the basic contours of the study. The researchers and Dartmouth IRB were narrowly focused on protecting the individual—how could sending a flyer hurt an individual voter in Montana? In their IRB application the researchers stated, “We do not plan on informing respondents that they are participants in an academic, educational study. We view this study as having minimal risk to the participants.” This was a view that the Dartmouth IRB accepted. The researchers actually gave Montanans more information about the purpose of the project by deviating from their own IRB application. The protection of humans in the aggregate is simply beyond the scope of the Dartmouth IRB vetting process.
In my report I stated the “outcome of a Supreme Court race is of great importance to the lives of the candidates, voters, and people of Montana. It has ramifications for decisions regarding the constitutionality of laws, who chairs (and usually is the pivotal vote) on the legislative redistricting commission, and decisions the Supreme Court makes for criminal and civil appeals. None of these impacts are trivial.” These factors also were of little interest to the researchers who presumed that the general election would not be competitive. They made no attempt to investigate the development of the Supreme Court race further. If they had they would have found that outside conservative groups were pouring money into the race and Montanans were inundated with advertising suggesting the incumbent justice, Mike Wheat, was a shill for Obama.
We need to reconceive how to vet research projects for political science. Many universities IRB procedures are designed for questions relating to biomedical research and of little use for our purposes. Indeed the whole IRB process may backfire since many political scientists view it as a gratuitous hurdle. Once the hurdle is cleared any reflection involving ethics may vanish in the hustle and bustle of conducting the research. The IRB is supposed to be the venue where ethical considerations are vetted so why reflect more about ethics once the project has passed muster? As I stated in my report, there is a real problem in “designing a research study aiming to influence vote tallies for the sake of studying the effects of influencing vote tallies.” The anger expressed by Montana voters is largely rooted in the violation of community norms and, indeed, should concern of us. The resulting collective ambiguity and confusion is a product of the fact that there are no mechanisms to ensure the safety of the community. The study had far greater problems than just the unauthorized use of the Great Seal. We must confront the fact that the fundamental design of the study put at risk the humans in the aggregate and acknowledge that this is a problem that should concern academics.
Happy to have other political scientists weigh in. Drop us a line.
