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It used to be that IRBs required AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT from participants. It doesn’t matter what just so story you tell yourself. Research ethics 101: Don’t use

It used to be that IRBs required AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT from participants. It doesn’t matter what just so story you tell yourself. Research ethics 101: Don’t use people as lab specimens unless they affirmatively consent. Period. We should go back to the days of actual ethics in research. Banks and brokerages can do whatever they want with customer data, subject to relevant laws and contracts. Researchers who ever want a penny from the public should be held to higher ethical standards.

SubiculumCode 5y ago
IRB's do require affirmative consent, but the IRB is not required to analyze certain datasets. Moreover, the contract of investors with the trading firm probably already had language allowing this usage.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  Dataset ethics review is becoming nore common. I'll be surprised if this "use corporate data without irb input" model survives the decade. Corps can put whatever they want in tos, and researchers are free to use data from those corps. But federal agencies should refuse to fund those pis and their institutions.
huitzitziltzin 5y ago
> It used to be that IRBs required AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT This is (and has always been) waivable in cases (like this one) where either obtaining consent is impractical (which maybe applies here) OR you are making use of de-identified data (more likely to apply in this case). Affirmative consent still is required in many cases. With health data (the case I know personally), it would not be feasible for me to find five million patients and ask them to participate in my boring study answering a question which wouldn’t interest them. Just mailing each of them a letter to ask would be cost prohibitive! The value of research is frequently non-zero, whereas the risk to the participants is generally zero or extremely low. This is the balance the IRB is trying to strike. And believe me, as someone who has gone through it, I think they err way way WAY too far on the side of being overly cautious!

SubiculumCode 5y ago

IRB's do require affirmative consent, but the IRB is not required to analyze certain datasets. Moreover, the contract of investors with the trading firm probably already had language allowing this usage.

throwawaygh 5y ago
Dataset ethics review is becoming nore common. I'll be surprised if this "use corporate data without irb input" model survives the decade. Corps can put whatever they want in tos, and researchers are free to use data from those corps. But federal agencies should refuse to fund those pis and their institutions.

huitzitziltzin 5y ago

> It used to be that IRBs required AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT This is (and has always been) waivable in cases (like this one) where either obtaining consent is impractical (which maybe applies here) OR you are making use of de-identified data (more likely to apply in this case). Affirmative consent still is required in many cases. With health data (the case I know personally), it would not be feasible for me to find five million patients and ask them to participate in my boring study answering a question which wouldn’t interest them. Just mailing each of them a letter to ask would be cost prohibitive! The value of research is frequently non-zero, whereas the risk to the participants is generally zero or extremely low. This is the balance the IRB is trying to strike. And believe me, as someone who has gone through it, I think they err way way WAY too far on the side of being overly cautious!