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> The UMN has not said yet whether it will be withdrawn. Regardless of UMN's decision, perhaps the IEEE should consider withdraw of this paper from their journ

> The UMN has not said yet whether it will be withdrawn. Regardless of UMN's decision, perhaps the IEEE should consider withdraw of this paper from their journal regardless, their acceptance criteria reads: > Discuss steps taken to ensure that participants and others who might have been affected by an experiment were treated ethically and with respect. > If a paper raises significant ethical and/or legal concerns, it might be rejected based on these concerns. https://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2021/cfpapers.html#Ethical-Considerations-For-Human-Subject-Research https://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2021/cfpapers.html#Ethica... In their apology letter, the researchers seem to acknowledge they ran afoul of this requirement: > As many observers have pointed out to us, we made a mistake by not finding a way to consult with the community and obtain permission before running this study; we did that because we knew we could not ask the maintainers of Linux for permission...

kdbg 5y ago
The paper was already withdrawn. https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kjlu/papers/withdrawal-letter.pdf https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kjlu/papers/withdrawal-letter....
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dvhh 5y ago
  While I applaud the initiative (not that they need my recognition), I am somewhat afraid that such withdrawal would snuff out any further debate in the scientific community about proper ethical behavior and its delimitation ( which are admittedly fuzzy )
  - tofof 5y ago
    > withdrawal would snuff out any further debate in the scientific community about proper ethical behavior You have this exactly backward. Far from "snuffing out" discussion of ethical behavior - the problem in the first place was that these researchers deliberately avoided the primary mechanism already in place to examine proper ethical behavior - their university's Institutional Review Board. The withdrawal is not an attempt to silence the discussion regarding the ethics at stake. Quite to the contrary, the withdrawal itself is an explicit admission of ethical failings: "our study design was inappropriate: specifically, it involved conducting research on the Linux kernel community without obtaining appropriate consent and approval." They continue, further conceding the ethical debate "We are withdrawing the paper so that we do not benefit from an improperly conducted study ... [and] to prevent our misguided research method from being seen as a model for how to conduct studies in the future." Nearly the entire issue at stake stems from the fact that these researchers did not properly use the Institutional Review Board already at their disposal. IRBs exist for the primary purpose of determining what proper ethical behavior IS, using existing widely-agreed-upon guidelines ("delimitation" in your terms) and judgment, and in ensuring such behaviors are followed. In particular, you normally must consult the IRB before any experiment is conducted on subjects. IRBs also serve as a primary party in the examination of any allegations of ethical misconduct. The researchers in question only consulted their IRB after already conducting the research and publishing its abstract to twitter, for which they received "heated discussion and pushback," and were then forced to removed the abstract and apologize to their own IRB for causing "many confusions and misunderstandings" according to the linked article.
- tofof 5y ago
  This is extremely relevant and neither mentioned nor linked to in the attached article. You might want to post this as a top level comment instead of a reply so it gets the attention it deserves.
detaro 5y ago
The conference has promised a review of their decision making about this paper, I hope they will be transparent about such concerns if there were any voiced in the process.
ikerdanzel 5y ago
If you observed carefully, UMN research is correct even though ethics-wise is very questionable. Linux foundation only managed to notice a few of those "bad faith". This means some of those commits did slip through. And many at the Foundation had their ego bruised. Now imagine it is not done by UMN but real bad faith parties. Linux Foundation process do have weaknesses that UMN had discovered. We should not be too quick to blame rhose researchers. Open source do require many eyes to verify. Simply notifying Linux maintainers of incoming broken patches will defeat the purpose. If the creator of Linux is widely known of his ego, extending similar expectation to others are not unreasonable. And if you have ego and reputation to protect, either the research permissions wont be granted or one actively be on lookout.

kdbg 5y ago

The paper was already withdrawn. https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kjlu/papers/withdrawal-letter.pdf https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kjlu/papers/withdrawal-letter....

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dvhh 5y ago
While I applaud the initiative (not that they need my recognition), I am somewhat afraid that such withdrawal would snuff out any further debate in the scientific community about proper ethical behavior and its delimitation ( which are admittedly fuzzy )
- tofof 5y ago
  > withdrawal would snuff out any further debate in the scientific community about proper ethical behavior You have this exactly backward. Far from "snuffing out" discussion of ethical behavior - the problem in the first place was that these researchers deliberately avoided the primary mechanism already in place to examine proper ethical behavior - their university's Institutional Review Board. The withdrawal is not an attempt to silence the discussion regarding the ethics at stake. Quite to the contrary, the withdrawal itself is an explicit admission of ethical failings: "our study design was inappropriate: specifically, it involved conducting research on the Linux kernel community without obtaining appropriate consent and approval." They continue, further conceding the ethical debate "We are withdrawing the paper so that we do not benefit from an improperly conducted study ... [and] to prevent our misguided research method from being seen as a model for how to conduct studies in the future." Nearly the entire issue at stake stems from the fact that these researchers did not properly use the Institutional Review Board already at their disposal. IRBs exist for the primary purpose of determining what proper ethical behavior IS, using existing widely-agreed-upon guidelines ("delimitation" in your terms) and judgment, and in ensuring such behaviors are followed. In particular, you normally must consult the IRB before any experiment is conducted on subjects. IRBs also serve as a primary party in the examination of any allegations of ethical misconduct. The researchers in question only consulted their IRB after already conducting the research and publishing its abstract to twitter, for which they received "heated discussion and pushback," and were then forced to removed the abstract and apologize to their own IRB for causing "many confusions and misunderstandings" according to the linked article.
tofof 5y ago
This is extremely relevant and neither mentioned nor linked to in the attached article. You might want to post this as a top level comment instead of a reply so it gets the attention it deserves.

detaro 5y ago

The conference has promised a review of their decision making about this paper, I hope they will be transparent about such concerns if there were any voiced in the process.

ikerdanzel 5y ago

If you observed carefully, UMN research is correct even though ethics-wise is very questionable. Linux foundation only managed to notice a few of those "bad faith". This means some of those commits did slip through. And many at the Foundation had their ego bruised. Now imagine it is not done by UMN but real bad faith parties. Linux Foundation process do have weaknesses that UMN had discovered. We should not be too quick to blame rhose researchers. Open source do require many eyes to verify. Simply notifying Linux maintainers of incoming broken patches will defeat the purpose. If the creator of Linux is widely known of his ego, extending similar expectation to others are not unreasonable. And if you have ego and reputation to protect, either the research permissions wont be granted or one actively be on lookout.