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I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

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Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#201

Post by dchest »

lisper wrote: post #189
seanhunter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for starters they are lying and misreprenting themselves and the basis for their query. They say they are a data subject from Nice and represent that they are going to make a request under the CCPA. In actual practise they are a researcher from Princeton. If you don't think that's an ethical problem then I don't see it's worth discussing further. When you say "If I as an ordinary citizen..." you essentially make…

> They say they are a data subject from Nice Huh? Are we reading the same article? Because what I see is this: > My name is Maya Mishina, and I am a resident of Novosibirsk, Russia.

There were multiple emails with multiple fake identities from these domains:

  envoiemail.fr
  novatormail.ru
  potomacmail.com
  princetondmarcstudy.org
  princetonprivacystudy.org
  yosemitemail.com
They also send different messages, e.g. fake California residents asking about GDPR, not CCPA.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#202

Post by lysium »

brabel wrote: post #190
seanhunter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for starters they are lying and misreprenting themselves and the basis for their query. They say they are a data subject from Nice and represent that they are going to make a request under the CCPA. In actual practise they are a researcher from Princeton. If you don't think that's an ethical problem then I don't see it's worth discussing further. When you say "If I as an ordinary citizen..." you essentially make…

> they are lying and misreprenting themselves The police does that quite often to catch criminals. Sometimes they also target innocent people, is that ethical? People on HN don't usually lie, I hope, but most "misrepresent" themselves using anonymous accounts, sometimes claiming to be more than they actually are (I know, shocking). Emails you receive are more likely to be scams than not. If you're like the author and…

> The police does that quite often to catch criminals. Sometimes they also target innocent people, is that ethical?

This should tell you something about your police, not about ethics.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#203

Post by nr2x »

kube-system wrote: post #198
brabel wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are lying and misreprenting themselves The police does that quite often to catch criminals. Sometimes they also target innocent people, is that ethical? People on HN don't usually lie, I hope, but most "misrepresent" themselves using anonymous accounts, sometimes claiming to be more than they actually are (I know, shocking). Emails you receive are more likely to be scams than not. If you're like the author and…

Academic research has a well established and formal set of ethics rules. These rules are not as established or strict for other professions.

specifically, deception studies are really hard to get approved - and for good reason. looks like this wasn't properly reviewed.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#204

Post by kube-system »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #42
walrus01 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see emails from cranks all the time and similarly have a do-not-respond policy to any of them, but at the same time, something like this is very slightly worrisome because it seems to be presenting the non-zero chance that some random person will sue you in your local court system. Which even if it is completely nonsensical and has no basis in law, could cost thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer and file a respons…

> very slightly worrisome Recommend you don’t spend “ thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer and file a response” on something that you find very slightly worrisome. Again, I think you, too, are being suckered into spam. Plenty of people fall for spam scams. It is nothing to be ashamed of. Think of all the people who fall for the fake IRS phone calls. But learn from it: keep your guard up when you get emails, phone ca…

> Recommend you don’t spend “ thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer and file a response” on something that you find very slightly worrisome.

I call a lawyer any time I have a legal question for which I am not confident about the answer. If it’s not a real problem, a lawyer will be able to answer it a fraction of an hour’s worth of billable time.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#205

Post by dqv »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #175

I have pretty mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, I agree that the researcher's actions (particularly the use of a false identity) were inappropriate. I am hesitant to engage in "victim blaming" by calling the targets of the email naive. But I hope this has been a learning experience for everyone, as it seems to have revealed a lot of knowledge gaps that were surprising to me. I am not at all surprised that it w…

It is very much about experience. Now that I’m an old man in my late 20’s I can tell when it’s BS, but I empathize with the fear of the less-experienced. The first time I had a personal legal experience, I was confident about what the law was, and then got blown the fuck out. The second one was someone threatening some sort of criminal action to which I responded, “have the prosecutor reach out so we can put our lawyers in touch.” My heart beat irregularly for a few weeks whenever I thought about it; first because, despite having done nothing criminal, I was scared, but second because I didn’t actually have lawyers. It turned out to be nothing. They never contacted me again.

Maybe a “scam” email about CCPA would have been a better learning experience ;)

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#206

Post by lysium »

lisper wrote: post #199

My take: yes, a researcher misrepresented who they were. But that misrepresentation had nothing to do with the alleged harm. I see no reason to believe that the writer's reaction would have been any different if the request had been a completely legitimate one, which it very well could have been. The actual substance of the request was polite, non-threatening, and potentially legitimate. If the writer had bothered to…

Why did the university not disclose this is a research study? For their own gains, on the back of their research subjects. This is a shitty thing to do, even if it might be legally allowed. You cannot expect everyone to take that email easily.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#207

Post by ImaCake »

et2o wrote: post #67
PeterisP wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In particular, to an email which: 1. does not disclose that this is a research survey; 2. does not inform the recipient that they can decline to participate without any adverse consequence (as they state in their study FAQ), instead doing entirely the opposite - ending the mail with an assertion (untrue for most recipients) that they have a legal duty to respond; 3. lies about the origin of the email, inventing a fak…

You are the first person in this thread to concisely state the major ethical failings. These 4 things are universally required in human subjects research (or IRB-exempt HSR) and it's black-and-white unethical to omit them.

>does not disclose that this is a research survey

Yeah this is the big one for me. Coming from the context of medical research it is shocking to me how many commenters think this is okay. If this happened to be a disguised medical research survey the ethics board would never have let this past. And if they did it would bring down some serious bureaucracy on their heads.

I guess software and law just think they can test whatever they want and get away with it. Who cares if a few people end up emotionally scarred?

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#208

Post by tommek4077 »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #48

A lot of people mocking the author or others for being scared and worried are basically blaming the victim here, and I would like them to stop. The nature of legal practices in the USA is such that the answers to "Are you totally in the clear legally?" and "Will you lose significant amounts of money proving in random courts that you are in the clear legally?" are often both yes. As a result, any researchers who send…

Would it not need something written (paper) in the US to start anything? In most european countries you just ignore mails with stuff like this and wont be scared in anyway, just as you are not to be scammed by our beloved nigerian prince.

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#209

Post by nextaccountic »

dcow wrote: post #17

Can someone help me understand the ethical problem here? If I as an ordinary citizen contacted the webmaster with a similar worded email, the result would have been the same. The fact is that this “experiment” did not create any more or additional stress than is created for normal citizens/businesses simply engaging in normal legal activities. If submitting such a request has the potential to cause such undue stress,…

> Can someone help me understand the ethical problem here?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29611305

Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent

#210

Post by hellbannedguy »

Sebb767 wrote: post #124
42jd wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just going to tag along to my comment above. I can't help but notice the difference in tone of the responses to this article vs. the one yesterday ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29599553 ) which I did not see. It seems those who participated in the thread yesterday had a quite different opinion.

I guess it's the wording. "without my consent" is used to imply a strong violation of the personality rights, at least in some circles [0]. It's also pretty much a repeat of yesterdays post. At least to me, this makes the issue feel a bit overblown. [0] The irony that the whole problem is based on wording that implies a lawsuit is not lost on me.

When ever I read an email with Russia in it; I delete it.
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