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Fascinating that the research was judged not to involve human subjects.... As someone not part of academia, how could this research be judged to not involve pe

Fascinating that the research was judged not to involve human subjects.... As someone not part of academia, how could this research be judged to not involve people? It _seems_ obvious to me that the entire premise is based around tricking/deceiving the kernel maintainers.

dumpsterdiver 5y ago
Yeah, especially when the researcher begins gaslighting his subjects. He had the gall to call the maintainer's response "disgusting to hear", and then went on to ask for "the benefit of the doubt" after publishing a paper admitting that he decieved them. For comparison, imagine that you attented a small conference and unknowingly became a test subject, and when you sit down the chair shocks you with a jolt of electricity. You jump out of your chair and exclaim, "This seat shocked me!" Then the person giving the presentation walks to your seat and sits down and it doesn't shock him (because he's the one holding the button), and he then accuses you of wasting everyone's time. That's essentially what happened here.
shadowgovt 5y ago
And given the apparent failure of UMN's IRB, banning UMN from contributing to the Linux kernel honestly seems like a correct approach to resolve the underlying issue.
- jeremyjh 5y ago
  Probably science journals should suspend publication of any human research done in UMN. That might get this issue the attention it deserves. These were human trials without IRB pre-approval, but IRB condoned it afterward?
rococode 5y ago
That was my thinking too, surely their school's IRB would have a field day with this. The question is whether they ran this by their IRB at all. If they did it, there would be implications on the ethics of everything coming out of UMN. If they didn't, then the same for their lab. I know at my school things were quite clear - if your work requires any interaction with any human not in your lab, you need IRB approval. This is literally just a social engineering experiment, so of course IRB should have reviewed it. https://research.umn.edu/units/irb https://research.umn.edu/units/irb
- klodolph 5y ago
  They ran it by the IRB after publishing the paper, and the IRB issued a post-hoc exemption. Disgusting.

dumpsterdiver 5y ago

Yeah, especially when the researcher begins gaslighting his subjects. He had the gall to call the maintainer's response "disgusting to hear", and then went on to ask for "the benefit of the doubt" after publishing a paper admitting that he decieved them. For comparison, imagine that you attented a small conference and unknowingly became a test subject, and when you sit down the chair shocks you with a jolt of electricity. You jump out of your chair and exclaim, "This seat shocked me!" Then the person giving the presentation walks to your seat and sits down and it doesn't shock him (because he's the one holding the button), and he then accuses you of wasting everyone's time. That's essentially what happened here.

shadowgovt 5y ago

And given the apparent failure of UMN's IRB, banning UMN from contributing to the Linux kernel honestly seems like a correct approach to resolve the underlying issue.

jeremyjh 5y ago
Probably science journals should suspend publication of any human research done in UMN. That might get this issue the attention it deserves. These were human trials without IRB pre-approval, but IRB condoned it afterward?

rococode 5y ago

That was my thinking too, surely their school's IRB would have a field day with this. The question is whether they ran this by their IRB at all. If they did it, there would be implications on the ethics of everything coming out of UMN. If they didn't, then the same for their lab. I know at my school things were quite clear - if your work requires any interaction with any human not in your lab, you need IRB approval. This is literally just a social engineering experiment, so of course IRB should have reviewed it. https://research.umn.edu/units/irb https://research.umn.edu/units/irb

klodolph 5y ago
They ran it by the IRB after publishing the paper, and the IRB issued a post-hoc exemption. Disgusting.