Opposition research is gathering information intended to damage or discredit political adversaries. While the intent to find damaging or discrediting information might seem morally problematic, it can be neutral or even laudable. If the intent is to damage adversaries for political advantage, then this is not laudable but could still be ethical. After all, good might come from using opposition research to harm a bad opponent.

 The intent is to provide citizens with relevant and true information so they can make informed decisions, is morally laudable. This information allows for better decision making and can produce better results than making decisions with false or irrelevant information.

 While motives are relevant to assessing ethics, the morality of the motives is distinct from the morality of the research and its results.  This is because bad people with bad motives might do ethical research (for whatever reason) and end up doing good. For example, a selfish and corrupt politician might expose a worse villain. As would be expected, good people with good motives might engage in morally questionable research or end up causing harm, all from the best of intentions. For example, a researcher might use a questionable source and justify this by telling themselves that their good end justifies this means. As a final point about researchers, their ethics are irrelevant to the truth of the information they gather. To think otherwise, would be to fall into an ad hominem or genetic fallacy. In general terms, this is when an irrelevant negative assertion about a source is taken as evidence against their claim(s).  This is distinct from considering the ethics of the researchers when assessing their credibility. After all, bias reduces credibility and is relevant when assessing their likely honesty. Now to the ethics of research.

For this essay and those that follow in this series, it will be assumed that there are at least some moral limits to opposition research. Without this assumption, writing about the ethics of opposition would be limited to “anything goes.” One could refute this assumption by employing the approach of sophists both ancient and modern. The ancient sophists argued in favor of skepticism, relativism and the view that all that matters is success (or winning, if one prefers). On this view, there would be no moral limits on opposition research for two reasons. One is that skepticism and relativism about ethics results in the rejection of the idea of objective ethics. The other is that if success is all that matters, then there are no limits on the means that can be used to achieve it. What matters to the sophist, in terms of opposition research, is acquiring (or fabricating) information that can damage a political adversary and thus increase the chances of success.

In terms of arguments in favor of their being moral limits, one excellent place to start is by considering the consequences of having limits versus not having them. As noted above, good political decisions, such as deciding how to vote, require that citizens have relevant, true information. Opposition research that provides or aims at providing relevant and true information would enable citizens to make better decisions and (probably) produce better results. In contrast, taking the view that all that matters is victory will tend to produce worse results for the general good. There can be exceptions: a well-informed public might make terrible choices, and an utterly selfish person solely focused on their gain might end up somehow doing good. As would be expected, the general debate over whether there should be ethical limits on anything goes far beyond the possible scope of this short essay.

In the essays that follow, I will also make a case for there being ethical limits on opposition research. The gist of this argument is that if the essays are logically appealing, then that provides a reason to accept that there should be at least some limits on opposition research.  The assessment of the ethics of the research involves considering three key factors: the methods used, the sources and the content. There will be an essay on each.