Reflections on "making somebody angry"

This article presents an account of the methodological and ethical issues associated with a critical ethnographic study that focused on the problems of providing nondiscriminatory health care to people with HIV/AIDS. The focus is on the debates that followed the publication of the final report. The debates were centered around (a) formal objections by the chair of the institutional ethics committee to the standard procedure of a discussion of the methodological limitations imposed by the requirements of the conditions of access; (b) reactions by a small section of the medical profession to adverse findings, which were published in a professional medical journal and included an attack on both the methods used and the ethics of the researchers; and (c) the response of the media, which selectively sensationalized and distorted the findings. This discussion may provide further insight into the problems of gaining access to clinical settings for the purpose of conducting qualitative research.