Wibbly wobbly ethics

I'm really looking forward to today's guest speaker on ethics in research, because I realized a few classes ago, and from the readings, that my inner ethical compass might be a little out of whack. I remember in class when Sara was talking about Tracy's research on online gamer forums and how she might be perceived as a female researcher. In my head, I automatically thought - 'just pretend to be a regular guy, not a lady researcher, what's the biggie?' And then found out that would be a squishy ethical area, and my thinking is all wonky. 

I agree with Colin's post that there seems to be a lot of room for interpretation in the rules and regulations, and I also liked Mauri's point that there should be clear consequences outlined for going against the rules. Like I've said in the past, my research background has mostly been in either the morally bankrupt area of market research, or in user testing of interfaces, which involve people, but don't involve any personal aspects or emotional areas (at least for the systems I was working with - but this could change in the future!). So considering ethics in research is pretty new to me. For my research proposal project, I am going to be proposing research that works quite closely with some individuals, so these readings, and hopefully the discussions today, will be really helpful.