16.4: An Ethical Controversy
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Robert Allan ‘Laud’ Humphreys was an American sociologist and author, best known for his PhD thesis, Tearoom trade — an ethnographic account of anonymous male homosexual encounters in public toilets in parks. Humphreys was intrigued by the fact that the majority of participants in ‘tearoom’ activities—also called ‘tea-rooming’ in American gay slang—were outwardly heterosexual men, who lived otherwise conventional family lives in their communities. Therefore, it was important to them to preserve their anonymity during tearoom visits.
Typically, tearoom encounters involved three people—the two males engaging in a sexual act and a lookout person called a ‘watchqueen’. Since homosexual sexual activity was criminalised in the United States at the time, the job of the watchqueen was to alert the men if police or other people were nearby, while deriving pleasure from watching the action as a voyeur. Because it was not otherwise possible to reach these subjects, Humphreys showed up at public toilets, masquerading as a watchqueen. As a participant-observer, Humphreys was able to conduct field observations for his thesis in the same way that he would in a study of political protests or any other sociological phenomenon.
Since participants were unwilling to disclose their identities or to be interviewed in the field, Humphreys wrote down their license plate numbers wherever possible, and tracked down their names and addresses using public databases. Then he visited these men at their homes, disguising himself to avoid recognition and announcing that he was conducting a survey, and collected personal data that was not otherwise available
Humphreys’ research generated considerable controversy within the scientific community. Many critics said that he should not have invaded others’ right to privacy in the name of science, while others were worried about his deceitful behaviour in leading participants to believe that he was only a watchqueen when he clearly had ulterior motives. Even those who deemed observing tearoom activity acceptable because the participants used public facilities thought the follow-up survey in participants’ homes was unethical, not only because it was conducted under false pretences, but because of the way Humphreys obtained their home addresses, and because he did not seek informed consent. A few researchers justified Humphrey’s approach, claiming that this was an important sociological phenomenon worth investigating, that there was no other way to collect this data, and that the deceit was harmless, since Humphreys did not disclose his subjects’ identities to anyone. This controversy was never resolved, and it is still hotly debated today in classes and forums on research ethics.