Dilemmas of a Blogging Researcher

Well, it has been a while since I last posted and several of my readers have inquired what I have been up to.  It is nice to know that you are out there reading the blog!  In short, all is well here in Spain, but the pace of work has picked up and as I have been diving into real fieldwork, I have been focusing more on the scientific aspects of my work and less on the weekend family adventures.  I have been spending more time in the field during the week and more at home with domestic tasks on the weekends.  I have also been faced with some practical and ethical dilemmas about what to post.  Most of my thoughts and observations lately are very linked to my emerging findings and reflections as a researcher.  I have three dilemmas related to posting my research-based impressions and reflections before they are fully analyzed.  First, if I write my reflections here while they are still in the form of impressions, rather than thoroughly analyzed data, I run the risk of conveying incomplete or misleading information.  (On the other hand, it may be revealing and instructive to transparently share the thought processes of a researcher in the thick of things.) Second, posting preliminary findings on the web makes them vulnerable to potential (mis)appropriation by others before we are able to publish them, which could lead to propagation of incomplete or inaccurate information as well as loss of intellectual property for the researcher and her community partners.  Third, and perhaps most important, my current work involves interviewing herders.  These interviewees are “human subjects” in my research and have gone through a formal informed consent process in which I committed, as the researcher, to maintain their identities in confidence and to use the information they provide for research purposes only.  As entertaining and enlightening as it would be to describe some of these interactions, I do not wish to betray the confidence of the research participants at a stage when we are still getting to know one another and building trust.  It is quite different to post the research findings in summary form after the study is complete and the participants have had the opportunity to provide feedback on preliminary interpretations and results.  So, I am going to proceed cautiously with my next posts and would welcome feedback from any readers about how to address these potential challenges.