Facebook may not have obtained ‘informed consent,’ scientific journal says

Facebook Inc. confronted more criticism Thursday (Friday in Manila) as the editor of a scientific journal issued a statement suggesting the company failed to obtain “informed consent” for a controversial study of users’ emotions.

As a private company, Facebook wasn’t obliged to adopt the strict safeguards that government and academic scientists must use when testing human subjects, said the editor of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which published the Facebook study earlier this month.