Theodore S. Palys

Ted Palys is a social science researcher, methodologist and Professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His methodological interests go beyond the pragmatics of design and analysis to include implications of research policy changes on the sociology of knowledge. One focus was on of the impacts of the development of national codes of ethics and review and how institutions dealt with legal threats to research confidentiality (see Protecting Research Confidentiality: What Happens When Law and Ethics Collide, 2014, with co-author John Lowman). He was one of five academics from across the country appointed by the Presidents of Canada’s federal granting agencies to advise them how to improve Canada’s federal ethics policy’s consideration of research in the social sciences and humanities. More recently, his concerns with surveillance capitalism as the economic model for the internet have led him into the realm of internet governance, and the threat that model holds for our ability to protect research participants while doing research in controversial areas that often have the greatest need for empirically-derived information on which to develop and evaluate law and policy alternatives.