Tearoom Trade Ethical Issues

Sociologist Laud Humphreys, used deception to observe men, who were unaware of Humphrey’s topic of research, as sources of the daily lifestyles of homosexual males, in order to help him create his book “Tearoom Trade”. Humphreys was able to find the right data was by recording license plate numbers of the participant, so he can find their addresses, go to their homes and interviewed them. When he released his book however, a few social scientist claimed that Humphreys' research was a violation to professional ethics. I happen to agree with the scientists statement, because this project of knowing more about homosexual’s daily life, in my opinion, is not a good research topic.

If I found out that I was a subject to Humphreys project, I would feel I would understand why he needed it for his research and felt like I did a major part of helping him, but I will also feel betrayed that he never told me what was it for. The reason I would feel like I was tricked is because Humphreys never told me why he needed me for his research. Even though, he had

The reason why I think of this is because of how Humphreys performed the research and what was his topic. His topic for his book is unethical because it is not based on any sociology. Sociology is the development of the human structure; Humphreys did not follow this rule when he was creating the topic so it made it unethical and unreasonable. Furthermore, his research was also unethical; by the way he did his research, it was shown that Humphreys had took pictures of license plates so that he could find the home addresses and interview with his experiments. This is wrong because it violates privacy to the men he was interviewing with; also, Humphreys have not told them what the reason for the interview was, so it let them in a confused reaction into wanting to know why. Overall, both the topic and the research process for Humphreys books was