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By Philipp Kellmeyer Dr. med. Philipp Kellmeyer, M.D., M.Phil. (Cantab) is a board-certified neurologist working as postdoctoral researcher in the Intracranial EEG and Brain Imaging group at the University of Freiburg Medical Center, German. His current projects include the preparation of a clinical trial for using a wireless brain-computer interface to restore communication in severely paralyzed patients. In neuroethics, he works on ethical issues of emerging neurotechnologies. He is a member of the Rapid Action Task Force of the International Neuroethics Society and the Advisory Committee of the Neuroethics Network . What is machine learning, you ask?  As a brief working definition up front: machine learning refers to software that can learn from experience and is thus particularly good at extracting knowledge from data and for generating predictions [1]. Recently, one particularly powerful variant called deep learning has become the staple of much of recent progress (and hype)...

“They said, ‘You can’t mess with my emotions. It’s like messing with me. It’s mind control.'” That’s what Cornell communication and information science professor Jeffrey T. Hancock reported in a recent New York Times article about the public outcry over the now infamous Facebook emotional manipulation study (read on for details). Hancock was surprised and dismayed over the response. He sees the advent of massive-scale sociology and psychology research on the Internet as a “new era” and he has a point. The days of mostly relying on college students as research subjects may be coming to an end. But how should research be conducted in this new online setting? Is it even appropriate to use data from web sites as it is collected now with little, if any, user knowledge and informed consent existing only in the form of privacy policies that nobody reads? 1 In this post I argue that the Internet is not the Wild West and therefore internet-based research should not be allowed to side st...