UMN CS&E Statement on Linux Kernel Research

Post by azernik » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 12:51 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #9

I found these statements by the associate department head interesting: https://twitter.com/lorenterveen/status/1384955467051454466 > I do work in Social Computing, and this situation is directly analogous to a number of incidents on Wikipedia quite awhile ago that led to that community and researchers reaching an understanding on research methods that are and are not acceptable. and https://twitter.com/lorenterveen/s…

Post by alisonkisk » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 12:54 AM UTC

seoaeu wrote: post #233

notyourday wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is an adjunct that just trashed university's reputation. I'm sure it would even fall into firing for cause

Missed the adjunct part... I'm with you on this one.

Post by macintux » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 12:57 AM UTC

dleslie wrote: post #197

Traster wrote: post #2

This is a great statement, they confirm they're aware of the issue, they acknowledge the concerns and they set out their intention to gather the full facts whilst suspending the operation of the research in the meantime. They also acknowledge the systematic way the need to deal with this. I hope their follow up is as thorough but I want to applaud this, it's a good approach.

Is it? Their ethics committee approved the research, and yet I see no acknowledgement of their responsibility.

Post by dleslie » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #231

dleslie wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To get more specific: CS department leadership didn't know about the back and forth or publicity about this work in December. "_or publicity_" I think that says enough about the U of Mn.

I mean, the "publicity" here was the paper announcement and some arguing on Twitter involving the professor, that's not automatic "department leadership needs to look into this" material. If the IRB didn't find anything, it also didn't have a reason to involve leadership. As said elsewhere, something should probably have been noticed at that point, but they intend to look into that. Seems fair, as long as that's what…

Post by alpb » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

easton wrote: post #153

alpb wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is DHS Cybersecurity related to this?

They’d be concerned about (known-ish) bad actors getting commits into Linux without anyone catching it, and probably want to tell the foundation to start red-teaming the kernel commit process.