Answer:
The correct answer is a. Humphreys used license plate numbers to target their homes and interview the men without disclosing the real subject of his study.
Explanation:
Laud Humphreys (1930-1988) was a sociologist who for his PhD dissertation wrote a study called Tearoom Trade (1968), where he studied the behavior of males who engaged in homosexual sex in public toilets. Humphreys made a series of discoveries, like finding out that most of the men who engaged in these practices were not openly or overtly homosexual, and even a majority of them (54%) were married. However, his research was widely criticized because of how he performed it. Humphreys acted out as a sort of look-out for the men in the toilets, but without disclosing his identity as a researcher. Moreover, Humphreys followed the unwitting subjects of his study to their homes by tracking their license plate numbers and interviewed them, posing as a government health officer and hiding his true identity as a sociologist conducting research. Lying to subjects and hiding from them that they're part of a study is frowned upon by the scientific community, so the research was widely controversial, and it's still brought up as an example of the ethics of social research.
