• February 10, 2009

In a rare public repudiation, the Executive Council of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) announced an eight-month investigation found that Dr. Gilbert Burnham violated the association's Code of Professional Ethics & Practices. AAPOR found that Burnham, a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, repeatedly refused to make public essential facts about his research on civilian deaths in Iraq. In particular, the AAPOR inquiry focused on Burnham's publication of results from a survey reported in the October 2006 issue of the journal Lancet. When asked to provide several basic facts about this research, the association said Burnham refused. AAPOR holds that researchers must disclose, or make available for public disclosure, the wording of questions and other basic methodological details when survey findings are made public. This disclosure is important so that claims made on the basis of survey research findings can be independently evaluated. Section III of the AAPOR Code states: "Good professional practice imposes the obligation upon all public opinion researchers to include, in any report of research results, or to make available when that report is released, certain essential information about how the research was conducted."