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I was part of a human subject research study without my consent
221–230 of 382 posts
Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
It really depends on your ethical framework doesn't it? People lie all the time for good reasons. Are those actions unethical? Further, I am struggling to see who was harmed here or how there was any ill intent. On top of that, the results of this study seem like they would be enlightening. It seems like society should want this experiment to be able to take place. Certainly a western liberal understanding of ethics…
The formal ethics of research on humans requires informed consent of participants. You can take framework of sales or management where lie is just being smart, but it is not applicable here.
As a researcher, I find this fascinating. Would you mind citing the requirements that all human research requires consent?
I agree with it, and I feel it's my duty to be well-informed on this. So I thought I'd ask you.
Everything I can find is only applicable for medical research, and not social research.
Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent
#223The Institutional Review Board doesn't seem to be much of an "ethical board" given they don't consider the stress this causes the human side of the website operators. How did they conclude this doesn't count as "human subjects research" given the expectation is to measure a human response to an email (framed as from a person)?
> The Institutional Review Board doesn't seem to be much of an "ethical board" YES! I know you intended this as an insult, but it is actually one of the most insightful comments in the thread. An IRB is not supposed to be an ethical board. They have a much more limited scope of overseeing human subject research. > How did they conclude this doesn't count as "human subjects research" given the expectation is to measur…
Then it sounds like the blame is solely on the researchers for thinking IRB approval == greenlight to do whatever the hell we want. Or we have a mismatch in the social contract of research.
Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
The formal ethics of research on humans requires informed consent of participants. You can take framework of sales or management where lie is just being smart, but it is not applicable here.
Deception is allowed, but should be scrutinized carefully to determine if it is necessary. In this case, it was not necessary. The researcher could have easily just said "we want to know if you are compliant with CCPA for the purpose of doing this research, could you tell us your policy please" https://research.oregonstate.edu/irb/research-involving-dece... quotes: a) Psychologists do not conduct a study involving de…
Are you sure that this is applicable to OP's situation? It appears to be a set of guidelines, not a requirement. And in fact, I'm skeptical that there are requirements, except on a university-by-university basis -- which is to say, the process seems much less formal than people are saying.
For example, I would feel comfortable with this study if at the bottom it said "Just kidding, we're actually researchers. Can you explain what was going through your mind when you read this?" even though it's technically deceptive.
I'm a former pentester, and deceptions like this were run all day, every day, by a dedicated team. It's often phase one of phishing, since you end up assuming you're talking to a trustworthy source. So I'm wondering why we seem comfortable with that, but not this.
Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent
#225Earlier 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.
Getting “informed consent” is one of the big, guiding principles for research done on humans. My guess is the author deliberately used that language of the scientific community, to make clear that they did not agree to be part of the research.
Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent
#226This really feels like the long consequences for "it's just a prank bro" and "it's a social experiment (to totally misguide you into a behavior and claim it's a prank")".
Anyway,
127.0.0.1 - - [18/Dec/2021:04:04:57 +0000] "GET /security.txt HTTP/1.1" 404 2110 "-" "Go-http-client/2.0"
Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deception is allowed, but should be scrutinized carefully to determine if it is necessary. In this case, it was not necessary. The researcher could have easily just said "we want to know if you are compliant with CCPA for the purpose of doing this research, could you tell us your policy please" https://research.oregonstate.edu/irb/research-involving-dece... quotes: a) Psychologists do not conduct a study involving de…
Are you sure that this is applicable to OP's situation? It appears to be a set of guidelines, not a requirement. And in fact, I'm skeptical that there are requirements, except on a university-by-university basis -- which is to say, the process seems much less formal than people are saying. For example, I would feel comfortable with this study if at the bottom it said "Just kidding, we're actually researchers. Can you…
>It appears to be a set of guidelines, not a requirement.
I don't know about you but I learned about deception in research and its ethical implications in high school. To me, grown-ass adults working in the field of STEM not knowing ethical research, let alone a god damn researcher failing spectacularly and causing harm to an ungodly amount of people through the use of automated means is woefully beyond "oopsie, I really shouldn't have done that"
>For example, I would feel comfortable with this study if at the bottom it said "Just kidding, we're actually researchers. Can you explain what was going through your mind when you read this?" even though it's technically deceptive.
This is kinda what debriefing is, but it is usually more substantial than this. But that still feels extremely amateurish in my eyes. The stated research objective was to have a measure on CCPA/GDPA compliance and did not require deception whatsoever. Either the researcher was not imaginative, they didn't give a fuck, or they just wanted to try deception just for fun.
>I'm a former pentester, and deceptions like this were run all day, every day, by a dedicated team. It's often phase one of phishing, since you end up assuming you're talking to a trustworthy source.
I don't know about you but I hear news all the damn time where phishing emails go wrong--like I think I just saw a testimonial on reddit where fake phishing emails were so aggressive that it literally just ended up discouraging people from using email entirely to the point where people missed assignments and shit. Something similar happened in my company as well and a lot of people got furious.
Fake phishing things should also be heavily controlled, like for us, it is entirely voluntary.
Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
The formal ethics of research on humans requires informed consent of participants. You can take framework of sales or management where lie is just being smart, but it is not applicable here.
As a researcher, I find this fascinating. Would you mind citing the requirements that all human research requires consent? I agree with it, and I feel it's my duty to be well-informed on this. So I thought I'd ask you. Everything I can find is only applicable for medical research, and not social research.
Most universities require all social science research to go through IRB. https://sociology.unc.edu/graduate-program/graduate-research...
I've been seeing this a few times now. Extremely ignorant computer scientists and STEM folks skipping IRB and claiming "theyve never even heard of getting approval for social research". Pretty gross in my view honestly.
Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent
#229Said everyone with a facebook account.
Re: I was part of a human subject research study without my consent
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If a Russian were able to file suit in California, wouldn't the defendant have a chance early on to ask a judge to dismiss it? a particularly foolish or over-confident defendent might represent themselves, but otherwise, I would not budget less than $2000-3000 to hire a lawyer to draft and file a response to statement of claim and show up in court to attempt to get it dismissed before it gets started.
From a British perspective this sound like madness. We have a tradition of referring baseless legal threats to the precedent of Arkell v Pressdram.
A non-baseless threat so referred would land you in deep trouble, however.
I think the core issue here is not being able to distinguish the two cases easily.