Alan Jacobs

Whether the study was ethically questionable is itself debatable, and there are no black-and-white answers. Those defending the study have pointed out, quite rightly, that Facebook and many other online companies routinely perform such studies for their own benefit or as part of social experiments. They don’t need our consent to do such research and nobody seemed to care before, so why such an uproar now when the findings are published in a scientific journal? Facebook may well have done the exact same experiment anyway, and by collaborating with scientists, aren’t they doing it in a way that is publicly transparent and beneficial? Critics warn that too strong a backlash might dissuade such companies from joining forces with science in the future.

These are important points but they overlook the fact that, for better or worse, publicly funded science is held to a higher ethical standard than comparable research in the private sector. Once academic scientists get involved the bar is raised, never lowered. In fact, if this case has highlighted anything, it is how marketing research can be so unregulated. The Facebook study paints a dystopian future in which academic researchers escape ethical restrictions by teaming up with private companies to test increasingly dangerous or harmful interventions.

• Facebook Fiasco: Was Cornell University’s study of ‘emotional contagion’ a breach of ethics? | Science | theguardian.com. Via James Schirmer on Twitter, Some interesting questions here in light of my recent post on this subject.

Whether the study was ethically questionable is itself debatable, and there are no black-and-white answers. Those defending the study have pointed out, quite rightly, that Facebook and many other online companies routinely perform such studies for their own benefit or as part of social experiments. They don’t need our consent to do such research and nobody seemed to care before, so why such an uproar now when the findings are published in a scientific journal? Facebook may well have done the exact same experiment anyway, and by collaborating with scientists, aren’t they doing it in a way that is publicly transparent and beneficial? Critics warn that too strong a backlash might dissuade such companies from joining forces with science in the future.

These are important points but they overlook the fact that, for better or worse, publicly funded science is held to a higher ethical standard than comparable research in the private sector. Once academic scientists get involved the bar is raised, never lowered. In fact, if this case has highlighted anything, it is how marketing research can be so unregulated. The Facebook study paints a dystopian future in which academic researchers escape ethical restrictions by teaming up with private companies to test increasingly dangerous or harmful interventions.

But this case was never really about health policy. It isn’t really even about the ACA, except peripherally. This case is about the politics of recognition: it is about recognizing conservative religious claims that (a) contraceptives are different from other forms of health care (an issue the Court somewhat finesses by suggesting that immunizations and so on “may be supported by different interests”), (b) religious people’s “conscience” deserves great deference and priority in the public sphere, certainly a higher symbolic priority than women’s health, and © perhaps most specifically on point, that religion is not something people do on their own time, in their own churches, but rather, is a way that apparently even large for-profit businesses may conduct their affairs—and if they choose to do so, society must find ways to accommodate their “full participation in the economic life of the Nation” (p.46). None of these—neither (a), (b), nor ©—is really a legal claim. These are political claims. But this is high politics, not low politics. These are claims about how our nation is constituted and the place of religion in it.

Isn’t it striking that the most-typical and most-maligned genres of Instagram imagery happen to correspond to the primary genres of Western secular art? All that #foodporn is still-life; all those #selfies, self-portraits. All those vacation vistas are #landscape; art-historically speaking, #beachday pics evoke the hoariest cliché of middle-class leisure iconography. (As for the #nudes, I guess they are going on over on Snapchat.)

Why this (largely unintentional) echo? Because there is a sneaky continuity between the motivations behind such casual images and the power dynamics that not-so-secretly governed classic art…

Technology has so democratized image-making that it has put the artistic power once mainly associated with aristocrats—to stylize your image and project yourself to an audience as desirable—into everyone’s hands. (Although the parallel to art as “celebration of private property” is probably most vivid in the case of those who most closely resemble modern-day aristocrats. See: “Rich Kids of Instagram”). But images retain their function as game pieces in the competition for social status. “Doesn’t this look delicious?” “Aren’t I fabulous?” “Look where I am!” “Look what I have!

• Instagram and Art Theory (via Bill Couch)

As Justice Alito’s opinion emphasizes:

“The effect of the HHS-created accommodation on the women employed by Hobby Lobby and the other companies involved in these cases would be precisely zero. Under that accommodation, these women would still be entitled to all FDA-approved contraceptives without cost sharing.”

In light of this, the outraged reaction to the ruling ought to seem a bit puzzling. If what you are fundamentally concerned about is whether women have access to no-copay contraception, then there’s no obvious reason to invest such deep significance in the precise accounting details of the mechanism by which it is provided. You might even be heartened by a ruling that so centrally turns on the premise that accomodation for religious objectors is required when no women will lack such coverage who would have enjoyed it under a mandate.

The outrage does make sense, of course, if what one fundamentally cares about—or at least, additionally cares about—is the symbolic speech act embedded in the compulsion itself. In other words, if the purpose of the mandate is not merely to achieve a certain practical result, but to declare the qualms of believers with religious objections so utterly underserving of respect that they may be forced to act against their convictions regardless of whether this makes any real difference to the outcome. And something like that does indeed seem to be lurking just beneath—if not at—the surface of many reactions. The ruling seems to provoke anger, not because it will result in women having to pay more for birth control (as it won’t), but at least in part because it fails to send the appropriate cultural signal.

robertogreco:

Love Stitching, Hillary Fayle (one of many photos, via notrare)

robertogreco:

ALLEY 1, Miha Štrukelj (via “Alleyway Appeal: Miha Štrukelj’s Explorations of West L.A.”)

Send us your spirit, Lord, with the gifts of humility and understanding. Teach us that your Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, but even beyond our vision. Give us the comfort of knowing that nothing we can do will be complete, no statement of ours will say all that can be said, no prayer of ours fully express our faith, no confession of ours fully bring us to perfection. Make us content to plant seeds that will one day grow, to water seeds which others have planted, to accept that their promise may be for the future, to lay foundations for others to build on better. Give us the comfort of knowing that we are merely workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs, and, with your grace, prophets for a future not our own.

[gallery] robertogreco:

Love Stitching, Hillary Fayle (one of many photos, via notrare)

[gallery] robertogreco:

ALLEY 1, Miha Štrukelj (via “Alleyway Appeal: Miha Štrukelj’s Explorations of West L.A.”)