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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. Therefo

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 6y ago
This. This research says something about Minnesota's ethics approval process.
- eieiei 6y ago
  Yes!! Minnesota sota caballo rey. Spanish cards dude
  - oriolpr 6y ago
    Hi
    - oriolpr 6y ago
      hii
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ineedasername 6y 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 6y ago
    In the paper they state that they received an exemption from the IRB.
    - ineedasername 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.
      - sonofgod 6y ago
        https://research.umn.edu/units/irb/how-submit/new-study https://research.umn.edu/units/irb/how-submit/new-study , find the document that points to "determining that it's not human research", leads you to https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw4LRE9kGb69Mm5TbldxSVkwTms/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw4LRE9kGb69Mm5TbldxSVkwTms... The only relevant question is: "Will the investigator use ... information ... obtained through ... manipulations of those individuals or their environment for research purposes?" which could be idly thought of as "I'm just sending an email, what's wrong with that? That's not manipulating their environment". But I feel they're wrong. https://grants.nih.gov/policy/humansubjects/hs-decision.htm https://grants.nih.gov/policy/humansubjects/hs-decision.htm would seem to agree that it's non-exempt (i.e. potentially problematic) human research if "there will be an interaction with subjects for the collection of ... data (including ... observation of behaviour)" and there's not a well-worn path (survey/public observation only/academic setting/subject agrees to study) with additional criteria.
nsood 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
    However, if you use a personal email, you can’t hide behind “I’m just doing my research”.
  - olliej 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.

nanna 6y ago

This. This research says something about Minnesota's ethics approval process.

eieiei 6y ago
Yes!! Minnesota sota caballo rey. Spanish cards dude
- oriolpr 6y ago
  Hi
  - oriolpr 6y ago
    hii
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ineedasername 6y 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 6y ago
  In the paper they state that they received an exemption from the IRB.
  - ineedasername 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.
    - sonofgod 6y ago
      https://research.umn.edu/units/irb/how-submit/new-study https://research.umn.edu/units/irb/how-submit/new-study , find the document that points to "determining that it's not human research", leads you to https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw4LRE9kGb69Mm5TbldxSVkwTms/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw4LRE9kGb69Mm5TbldxSVkwTms... The only relevant question is: "Will the investigator use ... information ... obtained through ... manipulations of those individuals or their environment for research purposes?" which could be idly thought of as "I'm just sending an email, what's wrong with that? That's not manipulating their environment". But I feel they're wrong. https://grants.nih.gov/policy/humansubjects/hs-decision.htm https://grants.nih.gov/policy/humansubjects/hs-decision.htm would seem to agree that it's non-exempt (i.e. potentially problematic) human research if "there will be an interaction with subjects for the collection of ... data (including ... observation of behaviour)" and there's not a well-worn path (survey/public observation only/academic setting/subject agrees to study) with additional criteria.

nsood 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
  However, if you use a personal email, you can’t hide behind “I’m just doing my research”.
- olliej 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.