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Investigator/Researcher Code of Ethics

Last Modified: December 3, 2009

Authors: Sean Feeney

Abstract: A set of ethics guidelines for professional investigators and researchers of the paranormal.

Purpose: This document attempts to provide the public with a means of evaluating the professionalism of people involved in areas outside of mainstream science. It has been developed through online collaboration between investigators/researchers of diverse backgrounds in multiple fields.

PREAMBLE

Paranormal investigators shall commit themselves to making the recording, analysis, testing, and public dissemination of the paranormal a beneficial and respected profession. The terms ‘investigator’ and ‘researcher’ will be used interchangeably throughout this document.

In accordance with their commitment to the health, safety and welfare of the public, paranormal investigators shall adhere to the following principles:

  1. PUBLIC - Paranormal investigators shall act consistently with the public interest.
  2. CLIENT - Paranormal investigators shall act in a manner that is in the best interests of their client consistent with the public interest.
  3. METHOD - Paranormal investigators shall ensure that their investigative methods meet the highest professional standards possible.
  4. JUDGMENT - Paranormal investigators shall maintain integrity and independence in their professional judgment.
  5. ORGANIZATION - Paranormal organizations and their leaders shall subscribe to and promote an ethical approach to investigations and research.
  6. PROFESSION - Paranormal investigators shall advance the integrity and reputation of the profession consistent with the public interest.
  7. COLLEAGUES - Paranormal investigators shall be fair to and supportive of their colleagues.
  8. SELF - Paranormal investigators shall participate in lifelong learning regarding the practice of their profession and shall promote an ethical approach to the practice of the profession.

Article I. Transparent Organizational Structure

  1. Organizational structure must be transparent within and without the particular organization of investigators.
  2. Within a particular organization, all investigators, regardless of status, shall be notified of every member’s status within the group’s structure. Notifications of changes in membership rolls, and promotions and demotions within the organization’s structure, shall be made as soon as feasibly possible.
  3. Listings of a group’s organizational structure shall be made available to the public at large. The listing of both the hierarchy of the group, and the group’s member rolls of members in good standing, shall be kept as up-to-date as feasibly possible.
  4. An independent organizer shall never present his- or herself as affiliated in any manner with any paranormal investigation organization, either directly or indirectly. An investigator working as the member of a group shall never present his- or herself as being independent, directly or indirectly.

Article II. Responsible Reporting and Online Publication of Data

  1. As poetic license often results in elaborations that never really occurred, poetic license should not be used to add extraordinary descriptions, to eliminate or omit certain facts, or for the sake of time or space. Words should be chosen wisely.
  2. All facts should be recorded and presented whether they support a hypothesis or not. Objectivity should be maintained as much as humanly possible.
  3. All attempts should be made to avoid inaccurate documentation. Events should be written down as soon as possible, no matter how insignificant they might seem at the time. Time and location should be noted as exact as possible.
  4. All final reports should be published online for free, and witness contact information should not be released to the public. For privacy reasons, witnesses should always be asked whether they want their real name or an alias used in a report.
  5. All collected data should be submitted to a respectable, freely available database to allow statistical analysis. Sources should be credited appropriately.
  6. All possible explanations should be explored, and a worldly explanation should always be assumed until proven otherwise. Conclusions should not be based on intuition or “gut feeling.”

Article III. Respect for the Law and for Private Property

  1. All local laws should be researched and followed at all times.
  2. Permission to visit a property should be sought out in advance, in writing if possible.

Article IV. Interactions with Members of the Media

  1. Special care should be given to fact-checking before speaking with any member of the media. An investigator’s personal beliefs or unproven suspicions should not be communicated in such a forum.
  2. If misquoted or misinterpreted by the media, corrections should be made immediately through a public channel (i.e. paranormal organization website).
  3. Due to sensationalism, media sources should not be accepted as completely accurate by an investigator, although they can provide leads.

Article V. Monetary Donations

  1. The sale of books is only advisable when the books contain freely available data. If an investigator does not publish his or her data online and only provides it to the public for a fee (i.e. the price of the book), his or her motives may be questionable. Yes, the book would then be available at a library, but if the book is copyrighted other scientists and researchers would have trouble using the data to further the search for the truth. Such withholding of data can only be viewed as an attempt to profit (after all, the libraries do have to pay for those books and a portion of that money would go into the author’s pocket).
  2. Any organization who approaches an investigator for an investigation to “prove” their location as being “haunted” or otherwise unusual should be reminded that we cannot prove anything, we can only objectively investigate it.
  3. Donations are advisable so long as they only benefit the group as a whole and fall into one of the following categories:
    1. travel expenses including food and lodging;
    2. speaking or making appearances at for-profit venues;
    3. fund raising.
  4. All donations should be itemized and expense reports should be publicly available online for free for accountability purposes.
  5. Consulting to outside organizations (for example, film, television and radio producers) for a fee should be considered fund raising as long as the income benefits the group as a whole (not any single investigator).
  6. An individual doing consulting to outside organizations on their own time is only advisable so long as he or she is honest with other members of the community about how much he or she is making for the consulting work and so long as he or she is not making a living off of the consulting.
  7. Special exceptions are made for individuals or groups who have been contracted into doing season-long broadcast shows: due to the enormous amount of commitment and sacrifice required to produce such shows, it is understandable that they should receive some sort of monetary payment. However, the data produced during these investigations should still be made available as outlined in Article II.

Article VI. The Use of Controlled Variables

  1. “Spiritual” elements such as Ouija boards, séances, psychics, and “asking spirits for permission to do things” should not be used in anything other than a controlled experiment specifically about that element.

Article VII. Trace Evidence Handling

  1. Sites should be visited as soon as possible after an alleged environmental effect.
  2. Sites should be treated as a crime scene and, with the permission of the owner, cordoned off immediately to prevent interference or tampering.
  3. Collected samples, including control samples, should have a chain of custody document attached immediately. Their whereabouts should be secure and known at all times.
  4. Lab analysis should be done by someone not connected to the investigation, and preferably by someone not connected to the field.

Bibliography