Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle

The issue I have with the letter (not being involved at all and just following) is that it feels like an apology of the bully at school that took your lunch money, and the parents found out.

Honestly, for all we know this letter could be meaningless. A real good actor would also reveal the other commits in order to have a full disclosure.

Trust isn't based on promises, trust is based on past actions. Therefore they should be treated as such, as their actions are evidence for being a potentially malicious actor.

I'm still convinced Greg did the right thing here, as it's better to be safe than sorry in this case due to the sheer scale of an attack vector that the actors might have introduced.

Even if other commits of good actors at the same University are now treated with more attention to their code, I think they are a casualty that was predictable in the moment the ethics commitee signed off the paper's research procedure.

Do not entertain these people's pony show. Do not give them attention. The only way for UMN to be redeemed is for them to expel all the researchers responsible and to fire all the staff tangentially responsible for letting it happen.

First, they released their apology on a Saturday? The Friday / Saturday release is generally a bit shady to start with.

The single mention of the IRB and lack of apology for doing human behavior research without permission of the test subjects is still problematic. I suppose being involved with an industry that does A/B testing on users might be an excuse.

Also, "any harm" should be "the harm" in a sincere apology.

There are some relatively minor issues with this apology that appear to already have ample discussion here, and I'll not repeat it. I want something more: I want to hear from the sponsoring faculty, research ethics board, and editors of the journal that published the article. There appear to be some systemic issues in addition to the investigators' ill-considered project. How was it that this research, which is clearly unethical, ended up being published? I've sat on an IRB: this study would not even have been a close call. Did sponsoring faculty even send it for IRB approval? Did they disclose that they were misleading their subjects? If so, did the IRB approve it? Did it make any recommendations? When submitted for publication, did they state they had IRB approval? Did they disclose that they were misleading experimental subjects? Did any reviewers express ethical concerns? Were the ethics of this study discussed by editors? Because there's either some serious systemic flaws in the review and publication process for this paper or the investigators engaged in serious misconduct. If the latter an apology (while absolutely required) is far from sufficient to address the issue. If the former, then there are several other apologies due, along with confirmation that the process will be reviewed and corrected.

> end up sneaking in weasel words or phrases like this.

Honestly, based on the way they handled their "research" in the first place, sneaking weasel words into an open apology letter is entirely par for the course...