Questionable Ethics #4
A couple times in this series we’ve responded to articles where Randy Cohen simply seemed to be unnaturally definitive and certain when faced with issues that had lots of gray area. This time, though, I really think he’s just outright wrong. The letter in question:
My listing on ratemyprofessors.com has a few positive ratings, but the majority are from students who gripe about the workload and the density of my lectures. May I suggest to my more-satisfied students that they post a rating on the Web site? NAME WITHHELD, CALIFORNIA
No, says Cohen. It’s “skewing the results” and it’s not ethical. He at least is a little less definitive than usual, quoting a professor who thinks it’s necessary and saying that he “sympathizes” with the position. But really, I think he’s missing the whole point of how the internet works.
How much respect ratemyprofessors.com (or R.M.P., as it’s called in the article), is not clear. To many, posting negative evaluations of your professors on the site is about as worthwhile as writing graffiti about them on a bathroom wall. To others, it’s an honest effort to evaluate professor’s teaching, helpful when many departments ignore teaching in favor of research and other achievements when evaluating professors. I did a little bit of research to try to see which is more true. Looking up professors I know, both from classes I took as an undergrad and those I’ve TAed for as a grad student, I found the ratings correlated pretty well with what I thought of them. On the other hand, the site has a category for rating whether the professor is hot, and whether the class is easy (though they aren’t included in the overall ranking). It’s badly designed, the search function doesn’t work, and the front page sensationalizes bad reviews of famous professors.
If you really do see the site as complete junk, then obviously it’s fine to defend yourself against slander and gossip. That could justify actually lying and creating false users to submit fake reviews. Asking some of the students who like you to say so on the site really is really not so bad.
Even if you think these are good, worthwhile reviews, Cohen seems to not understand how internet polls work. People who have a vested interest in them try to get others to go and vote. You can bet that someone who hated your class put up a facebook status update asking all their friends in the class to submit negative reviews. This doesn’t make the results bad—it just means they measure enthusiasm of those who like/dislike you at least as much as the measure the number of such people. No one would tell presidential candidates that “getting out the vote” was “skewing” the results. You’re supposed to do that. If the reviews submitted represent real positive opinions, there is no way in which anyone is lying.
I think the bigger problem, which Cohen doesn’t even mention, is that such a suggestion coming from a professor to a student won’t appear entire voluntary. No student tells a professor they really hate their teaching. If a student’s view of the class isn’t as positive as the professor thinks, it puts them in a really awkward situation. That is maybe not such a fair way to treat a student. I could imagine, though, that this could be done in a sensitive and reasonable-enough way to prevent this issue. If so, I see no problem with it at all.
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