When the American Anthropological Association met last fall, members voted to support a restoration of Vietnam-era ethics rules against “secret research or any research whose results cannot be freely derived and publicly reported.” That vote was fueled by anxieties about social scientists’ roles in emerging military and intelligence programs.

In response to last fall’s vote, members of the association’s executive committee have spent several weekends chewing over potential changes in the organization’s ethics code. On Wednesday they unveiled their proposal.

The committee’s draft language says that anthropologists must be “honest and transparent with all stakeholders about the nature and intent of their research.” (In other words, anthropologists should not pose as tweedy academics if they are in fact feeding their data directly to military or intelligence agencies.) But the draft does not include a blanket ban on secret reports. Among other things, the committee members believe that archaeologists, for example, should be permitted to keep secret information about the exact location of certain sites, in order to protect the sites from looters and tourists.

The draft language will be debated, and almost certainly revised, during the association’s convention in San Francisco in November. If all goes according to plan, members will vote on new language in a mail ballot in early 2009.

In an e-mail message to The Chronicle today, Terence Turner, a professor emeritus at Cornell University and an author of last fall’s resolution, said he was not entirely happy with the draft language. At several points, he said, the draft “attempts to soften or qualify the application of the rules of the code … by asserting that they are only intended as topics of discussion or education rather than application in judgment or practice. These attempts to weaken or neutralize the code will be grounds of continuing struggle in the association.” —David Glenn