5 ms·

At this point how do you even make the difference between their genuine behavior and the behavior that is part of the research?

fellellor 5y ago
It would be hard to show this wasn’t genuine behaviour but a malicious attempt to infect the Linux kernel. That still doesn’t give them a pass though. Academia is full of copycat “scholars”. Kernel maintainers would end up wasting significant chunks of their time fending off this type of “research”.
- winkeltripel 5y ago
  The kernel maintainers don't need to show or prove anything, or owe anyone an explanation. The University's staff/students are banned, and their work will be undone within a few days. The reputational damage will be lasting, both for the researchers, and for UMN.
Mordisquitos 5y ago
I would say that, from the point of view of the kernel maintainers, that question is irrelevant, as they never agreed to taking part in any research so. Therefore, from their perspective, all the behaviour is genuinely malevolent regardless of the individual intentions of each UMN researcher.
- nanna 5y ago
  This. This research says something about Minnesota's ethics approval process.
  - eieiei 5y ago
    Yes!! Minnesota sota caballo rey. Spanish cards dude
    - oriolpr 5y ago
      Hi
      - oriolpr 5y ago
        hii
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    I'm surprised it passed their IRB. Any research has to go through them, even if it's just for the IRB to confirm with "No this does not require a full review". Either the researchers here framed it in a way that there was no damage being done, or they relied on their IRB's lack of technical understanding to realize what was going on.
    - sfshaw 5y ago
      In the paper they state that they received an exemption from the IRB.
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        I'd love to see what they submitted to their IRB to get the determination of no human subjects: It had a high human component because it was humans making decisions in this process. In particular, there was the potential to cause maintainers personal embarrassment or professional censure by letting through a bugged patch. If the researchers even considered this possibility, I doubt the IRB would have approved this experimental protocol if laid out in those terms.
        soneil 5y ago
        I have to admit, I can completely understand how submitting source code patches to the linux kernel doesn't sound like human testing to the layman. Not to excuse them at all, I think the results are entirely appropriate. What they're seeing is the immune system doing its job. Going easy on them just because they're a university would skew the results of the research, and we wouldn't want that.
        ineedasername 5y ago
        Agreed: I can understand how the IRB overlooked this. The researchers don't get a pass though. And considering the actual harm done, the researchers could not have presented an appropriate explanation to their IRB.
        5y ago
- nsood 5y ago
  It does prevent anyone with a umn.edu email address, be it a student or professor, of submitting patches of _any kind,_ even if they're not part of research at all. A professor might genuinely just find a bug in the Linux kernel running on their machines, fix it, and be unable to submit it. To be clear, I don't think what the kernel maintainers did is wrong; it's just sad that all past and future potentially genuine contributions to the kernel from the university have been caught in the crossfire.
  - thatguy0900 5y ago
    The professor, or any students, can just use a non edu email address, right? It really doesn't seem like a big deal to me. It's not like they can personally ban anyone who's been to that campus, just the edu email address.
    - vtail 5y ago
      However, if you use a personal email, you can’t hide behind “I’m just doing my research”.
    - olliej 5y ago
      no, that would get them around an automatic filter, but the ban was on people from the university, not just people using uni email addresses. I'm not sure how the law works in such cases, but surely the IRB would eventually have to realize that an explicit denouncement by the victims means that the "research" cannot go ahead
    - tmp538394722 5y ago
      For one, it’s a way of punishing the university. Eg - If you want to do kernel related research, don’t go to the university of Minnesota.
      - janoc 5y ago
        Which is completely fine, IMO, because,as pointed out already, the university's IRB has utterly failed here. There is no way how this sort of "research" could have passed an ethics review. - Human subjects - Intentionally misleading/misrepresenting things, potential for a lot of damage, given how widespread Linux is - No informed consent at all! Sorry but one cannot use unsuspecting people as guinea pigs for research, even if it is someone from a reputable institution.
cjohansson 5y ago
One could probably do a paper about evil universities doing stupid things.. anyway evil actions are evil regardless of the context, research 100-yrs ago was intentionally evil without being questioned, today ethics should filter what research should be done or not

fellellor 5y ago

It would be hard to show this wasn’t genuine behaviour but a malicious attempt to infect the Linux kernel. That still doesn’t give them a pass though. Academia is full of copycat “scholars”. Kernel maintainers would end up wasting significant chunks of their time fending off this type of “research”.

winkeltripel 5y ago
The kernel maintainers don't need to show or prove anything, or owe anyone an explanation. The University's staff/students are banned, and their work will be undone within a few days. The reputational damage will be lasting, both for the researchers, and for UMN.

Mordisquitos 5y ago

I would say that, from the point of view of the kernel maintainers, that question is irrelevant, as they never agreed to taking part in any research so. Therefore, from their perspective, all the behaviour is genuinely malevolent regardless of the individual intentions of each UMN researcher.

nanna 5y ago
This. This research says something about Minnesota's ethics approval process.
- eieiei 5y ago
  Yes!! Minnesota sota caballo rey. Spanish cards dude
  - oriolpr 5y ago
    Hi
    - oriolpr 5y ago
      hii
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ineedasername 5y ago
  I'm surprised it passed their IRB. Any research has to go through them, even if it's just for the IRB to confirm with "No this does not require a full review". Either the researchers here framed it in a way that there was no damage being done, or they relied on their IRB's lack of technical understanding to realize what was going on.
  - sfshaw 5y ago
    In the paper they state that they received an exemption from the IRB.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      I'd love to see what they submitted to their IRB to get the determination of no human subjects: It had a high human component because it was humans making decisions in this process. In particular, there was the potential to cause maintainers personal embarrassment or professional censure by letting through a bugged patch. If the researchers even considered this possibility, I doubt the IRB would have approved this experimental protocol if laid out in those terms.
      - soneil 5y ago
        I have to admit, I can completely understand how submitting source code patches to the linux kernel doesn't sound like human testing to the layman. Not to excuse them at all, I think the results are entirely appropriate. What they're seeing is the immune system doing its job. Going easy on them just because they're a university would skew the results of the research, and we wouldn't want that.
        ineedasername 5y ago
        Agreed: I can understand how the IRB overlooked this. The researchers don't get a pass though. And considering the actual harm done, the researchers could not have presented an appropriate explanation to their IRB.
      - 5y ago
nsood 5y ago
It does prevent anyone with a umn.edu email address, be it a student or professor, of submitting patches of _any kind,_ even if they're not part of research at all. A professor might genuinely just find a bug in the Linux kernel running on their machines, fix it, and be unable to submit it. To be clear, I don't think what the kernel maintainers did is wrong; it's just sad that all past and future potentially genuine contributions to the kernel from the university have been caught in the crossfire.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  The professor, or any students, can just use a non edu email address, right? It really doesn't seem like a big deal to me. It's not like they can personally ban anyone who's been to that campus, just the edu email address.
  - vtail 5y ago
    However, if you use a personal email, you can’t hide behind “I’m just doing my research”.
  - olliej 5y ago
    no, that would get them around an automatic filter, but the ban was on people from the university, not just people using uni email addresses. I'm not sure how the law works in such cases, but surely the IRB would eventually have to realize that an explicit denouncement by the victims means that the "research" cannot go ahead
  - tmp538394722 5y ago
    For one, it’s a way of punishing the university. Eg - If you want to do kernel related research, don’t go to the university of Minnesota.
    - janoc 5y ago
      Which is completely fine, IMO, because,as pointed out already, the university's IRB has utterly failed here. There is no way how this sort of "research" could have passed an ethics review. - Human subjects - Intentionally misleading/misrepresenting things, potential for a lot of damage, given how widespread Linux is - No informed consent at all! Sorry but one cannot use unsuspecting people as guinea pigs for research, even if it is someone from a reputable institution.

cjohansson 5y ago

One could probably do a paper about evil universities doing stupid things.. anyway evil actions are evil regardless of the context, research 100-yrs ago was intentionally evil without being questioned, today ethics should filter what research should be done or not