Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

blog.freeradical.zone

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 353 posts

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#131

Post by seoaeu »

nikitaga wrote: post #86
malwarebytess wrote: post #70

I'm confused how this is human experimentation. Were they not merely collecting information on how a site handles these requests? Is it because they erroneously sent emails to sites that do not fall under the umbrella of the law they were examining? An email asking an organization for answers to questions is human experimentation? I must be missing something.

* When you do something to people to see how they act, it's a human experiment. The purpose of this study was officially "to understand how websites would respond to real users" * The participants / subjects of the study are people, not "websites" as the study claims. Websites don't read and respond to emails, people do. * The participants of this study were selected without their consent * The participants were not…

> When you do something to people to see how they act, it's a human experiment.

That's not the official definition an IRB would use. The official definition is a lot less broad than a lot of people on this thread seem to think. It requires that are collecting biospecimens, identifiable private information, or certain kinds of information about a specific person. [0]

[0]: https://grants.nih.gov/policy/humansubjects/research.htm

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#132

Post by Paul-E »

michaelhoffman wrote: post #118
geofft wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Ross didn't mean to do this is all the more reason why someone - maybe an IRB, maybe not (your argument makes sense) - should be assisting 20-something researchers with having a well-informed perspective. In the absence of an organization that's good at this (which doesn't seem to exist and should), this probably should be the supervising professors.

As a research group leader, I find it unfortunate that the grad student seems to be the public face of this and is therefore attracting most of the ire. Feels like the student is being thrown under the bus, and responsibility for ensuring the study is conducted ethically should ultimately be that of the principal investigator.

Thank you for making this point. I didn't articulate it, but this is part of why I felt I had to say something.

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#133

Post by dang »

ineedasername wrote: post #26

Ross Teixeira, the PhD student that did this, had the brazen nerve to post this lie on Twitter: Responses to the study have been overwhelmingly positive, and I particularly appreciate the notes of encouragement that some websites have sent. We look forward to sharing results in the coming year, with the goals of identifying best practices and informing future policy making. https://mobile.twitter.com/RossTeixeira/sta…

> had the brazen nerve to post this lie

That's excessive, crosses into personal attack, and breaks the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Please make your substantive points without stooping to that.

This is not a site for stirring up internet mobs. We're trying to avoid the online callout/shaming culture here.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#134

Post by nyolfen »

nikitaga wrote: post #86
malwarebytess wrote: post #70

I'm confused how this is human experimentation. Were they not merely collecting information on how a site handles these requests? Is it because they erroneously sent emails to sites that do not fall under the umbrella of the law they were examining? An email asking an organization for answers to questions is human experimentation? I must be missing something.

* When you do something to people to see how they act, it's a human experiment. The purpose of this study was officially "to understand how websites would respond to real users" * The participants / subjects of the study are people, not "websites" as the study claims. Websites don't read and respond to emails, people do. * The participants of this study were selected without their consent * The participants were not…

this might be the definition of human experiment in everyday speech but it is not for the purposes of an IRB -- they would have to be collecting PII from the subjects

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#135

Post by dredmorbius »

vulcan01 wrote: post #67
dredmorbius wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And thanks. I was concerned that might be too much adaptation. Apparently not.

I'm not a moderator (obviously) but I've noticed that when the article's original title is sufficiently vague (like for this one) the mods allow for a lot of leeway in the title as long as it is representative of the article.

Nor am I, though I often email HN with issues (titles is a frequent case).

The guidelines call for original titles unless excessively long or clickbait, and request no editorialisation:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The typical options for alternatives are:

- Shorten the original title, especially by elmininating superlatives or counts. "Ten things you should know ..." becomes "Things you should know...", "Incredible new light..." becomes "New light ..."

- Replace vague terms. "This guy who.,." becomes "...". Note that this often (though not always) shortens the title.

- Substitute an alternative title. The tag might work, if present, otherwise a line picked verbatim from the article if possible. Occasionally gluing two phrases together is justified, as here, where "CCPA Scam" was the obvious substitution for the pronoun "This".

The key here is to find something that clearly expresses the significant content / context of the article, without sensationalisation.

Different types of submissions have their own challenges. Many commercial pieces are clickbaity, vague, listicles, or sensationalised. Microblogs (Mastodon, Twitter) have no title, and the lede line may not be especially descriptive. Blog titles run the gamut from infuriatingly vague to pretentious to long to overly terse. So long as I think I can make a reasonable argument for a substitution and it improves the headline, I'll propose it. If it's my own submission, I'll include a comment describing any changes made. (The start of this thread was to be that comment except that the article was already submitted.)

There's an exception to the clarity rule in practice for major announcements, as in corporate earnings and departures, which are often simply titled "Letter to..." or " Earning statement ...". Rather than highlight the principle point, especially in the first case, HN tends to shy from that, largely to help tamp down hot takes and emotive responses. Which probably does help improve the quality of discourse. (See for example Jeff Bezos's CEO resignation announcement, or Jack Dorsey's.)

My suggestions for alternatives are frequently accepted by HN mods, or they'll come up with something close to it.

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#136

Post by gpm »

seoaeu wrote: post #131
nikitaga wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* When you do something to people to see how they act, it's a human experiment. The purpose of this study was officially "to understand how websites would respond to real users" * The participants / subjects of the study are people, not "websites" as the study claims. Websites don't read and respond to emails, people do. * The participants of this study were selected without their consent * The participants were not…

> When you do something to people to see how they act, it's a human experiment. That's not the official definition an IRB would use. The official definition is a lot less broad than a lot of people on this thread seem to think. It requires that are collecting biospecimens, identifiable private information, or certain kinds of information about a specific person. [0] [0]: https://grants.nih.gov/policy/humansubjects/re…

You're misreading it, the definition quoted on that page is very broad, specifically a human subject is the following with irrelevant clauses in or's removed and replaced with [or ...]:

> a living individual about whom an investigator (whether professional or student) conducting research:

> - Obtains information [or ...] through [... or] interaction with the individual, and uses, studies, or analyzes the information [or ...]; or

> - [...]

The actual legal definition is here [1], and further clarifies that "interaction" is very broad, specifically "Interaction includes communication [or ...] between investigator and subject."

This clearly qualifies OP as a human subject and this as human subjects research.

[1] Search "(e)(1) Human subject": https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/regulations/...

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#137

Post by elliekelly »

kf6nux wrote: post #88

From the study's FAQ[0]: > Did an Institutional Review Board consider this study? > We submitted an application detailing our research methods to the Princeton University Institutional Review Board, which determined that our study does not constitute human subjects research. From the social experiment[as reported by OP's link]: > I look forward to your reply without undue delay and at most within 45 days of this emai…

I don’t think it’s intended as a veiled threat of a lawsuit so much as a statement of the compliance requirements. Unfortunately it seems they misunderstood the scope which makes the it inaccurate. But if the statement was true and accurate I would just take it as a helpful reminder of the timeframe.

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#138

Post by DannyBee »

zajio1am wrote: post #128
michaelhoffman wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Howdy Paul! I definitely see a problem in that some people think that if the IRB doesn't object to what they're doing, it's OK. But ethics is a responsibility of the entire research team, and the research team is usually far better placed to understand the implications of their research strategy than the IRB. The following are big problems here: - lack of informed consent - deception Researchers should be trained tha…

Aren't these issues common in many other societal studies, for example fake resume hiring studies?

Yes.

IRB's exist, in part, to weight the cost to the humans/etc vs the possible benefit of the study.

Take: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w21560/w215...

Look at footnote 3.

There is often a tendency to dehumanize things when it involves sending stuff to corporations. Even in that footnote, it's not employers processing fictious resumes, it's people.

So it's much more likely you'd get approval to do something "to a corporation" even though 99% of the time, it's really still being done to humans

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#139

Post by eli »

wtallis wrote: post #76
malwarebytess wrote: post #70

I'm confused how this is human experimentation. Were they not merely collecting information on how a site handles these requests? Is it because they erroneously sent emails to sites that do not fall under the umbrella of the law they were examining? An email asking an organization for answers to questions is human experimentation? I must be missing something.

> Were they not merely collecting information on how a site handles these requests? No. Obviously not. How could you have missed the fact that they were "collecting information" under false pretenses ?

With a false legal threat, no less

Re: CCPA Scam – Human subject research study conducted by Princeton University

#140

Post by pseudalopex »

danaris wrote: post #101
malwarebytess wrote: post #70

I'm confused how this is human experimentation. Were they not merely collecting information on how a site handles these requests? Is it because they erroneously sent emails to sites that do not fall under the umbrella of the law they were examining? An email asking an organization for answers to questions is human experimentation? I must be missing something.

> An email asking an organization for answers to questions is human experimentation? Organizations are made up of humans. Human experimentation is very broadly defined, for IRB purposes. As I understand it, if you're going to be asking humans to interact with researchers, in any way, and gathering data based on those interactions, that's human subjects research, and requires reasonable scrutiny from the IRB. Source:…

It could be your university's definition. Princeton's definition doesn't include information about organizations.[1] It would include information about solo projects arguably.

[1] https://researchdata.princeton.edu/research-lifecycle-guide/...

Post reply on HN