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13 Colo. Tech. L.J. 273 (2015)
Two Cheers for Corporate Experimentation: The A/B Illusion and the Virtues of Data-Driven Innovation

handle is hein.journals/jtelhtel13 and id is 297 raw text is: TWO CHEERS FOR CORPORATE
EXPERIMENTATION:
THE A/B ILLUSION AND THE VIRTUES OF
DATA-DRIVEN INNOVATION
MICHELLE N. MEYER*
INTRODUCTION: Two FRAMES FOR THINKING ABOUT CORPORATE
EXPERIM  ENTATIO N  ...................................................................................... 2 74
I. BACKGROUND TO THE FACEBOOK EXPERIMENT ............................................. 279
A. Facebook's Algorithmic News Feed Practice ............................ 279
B. The Emotional Valence of News Feed Posts .............................. 282
C. Four Hypotheses about the Effects of News Feed .................... 283
D. The Facebook Emotional Contagion Experiment ................ 285
II.  FRAME ONE: HUMAN     SUBJECTS RESEARCH ................................................ 287
A. Subjects Gave No Ethically Meaningful Consent to the
E xp erim en t ......................................................................................... 2 8 8
B. Why Consent Is Not Always an Ethical Requirement of
Hum  an  Subjects  Research  ............................................................ 292
C. Was Informed Consent an Ethical Requirement of the
Facebook   Experim  ent? ................................................................... 298
1 .  In feasib ility  ................................................................................... 2 9 8
2. Incompletely Informed Consent .......................................... 298
3 .  D eb riefin g  ...................................................................................... 3 0 0
4. M inim al Risk  A nalysis .............................................................. 302
III. FRAME Two: RESPONSIBLE INNOVATION ..................................................... 310
A. The Ethical Relevance of the Distribution of Research
R isks  and  B enefits ............................................................................ 3 10
B. Mini Case Study in the A/B Illusion: OkCupid's Matching
* J.D., Ph.D.; Assistant Professor and Director of Bioethics Policy, Union
Graduate College-Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Bioethics Program. For helpful
questions and comments on various versions of this project, I thank seminar participants
at Carnegie Mellon University's Philosophy Department and Center for Ethics and Policy,
Emory University's Center for Ethics, and The Wharton School's Legal Studies & Business
Ethics Department and audience members and fellow panelists at MIT's Conference on
Digital Experimentation, Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R)'s
Advancing Ethical Research Conference, and the Silicon Flatirons Center's Conference on
When Companies Study Their Customers: The Changing Face of Science, Research, and
Ethics.

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