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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

#351

Post by chana_masala »

dawnbreez wrote: post #337
dr_dshiv wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend reading up on why not all human subjects research requires informed consent. For instance, there are exceptions for human subjects research that takes place on normal educational practices. This carve out was made because of the difficulty of getting unanimous consent from all parents during normal classroom education. With greater oversight and full informed consent, a lot of educational research simpl…

The example you gave is not relevant. The researchers in this study are already directly contacting everyone they need consent from, and if an individual declines, the rest of the sample can still be studied (unlike in a classroom setting, where everyone's physically in the same room and it's impossible to study any of them in isolation). Further, the study would still have worked if the researchers had simply asked…

Heh, you should check out who you're replying to. He runs some kind of educational research platform.

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

#352

Post by dr_dshiv »

dawnbreez wrote: post #337
dr_dshiv wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend reading up on why not all human subjects research requires informed consent. For instance, there are exceptions for human subjects research that takes place on normal educational practices. This carve out was made because of the difficulty of getting unanimous consent from all parents during normal classroom education. With greater oversight and full informed consent, a lot of educational research simpl…

The example you gave is not relevant. The researchers in this study are already directly contacting everyone they need consent from, and if an individual declines, the rest of the sample can still be studied (unlike in a classroom setting, where everyone's physically in the same room and it's impossible to study any of them in isolation). Further, the study would still have worked if the researchers had simply asked…

I’m not defending their study and I feel like you are trying to argue “sides” rather than trying to understand my point about nuance.

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

#353

Post by johnchristopher »

xena wrote: post #257
johnchristopher wrote: post #226

This 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" I suppose there are no IP anyway and the reverse proxy doesn't forward them.

Author of the article, I replaced an actual IP address with 127.0.0.1 because I didn't want to list some random AWS IP on my blog without knowing who it is related to.

Any reasons why you keep them (beyond blacklisting I guess) and can't do without logging them ? That'd be one less pain point.

Love the look of the site btw :).

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

#354

Post by userbinator »

dqv wrote: post #164
userbinator wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Russian with questions about California... If the first sentence didn't already raise your suspicion, the second one definitely should, and put it over the threshold for spam/scam.

Customers say weird shit in correspondence all the time and you have to fill in a lot of blanks. This would have easily imprinted “oh she lived in California at one point and wants to know if we’ll still comply with her requests” in customer service mode.

The "is this even a customer" filter should catch that.

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

#355

Post by malwarebytess »

kstrauser wrote: post #316
malwarebytess wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not research on humans as such. it was intended to be research on organizations, websites large enough to be subject to the law.

I got one of these letters, and the website in question has $0.00 revenue, and an order of magnitude fewer total users than would invoke the users. The linked story here is about someone who got a letter to their personal blog. The researchers did no (or very poor) screening.

That I agree with. Their collection methodology was clearly inadequate. They should have been more careful who they mailed, even though they did try to be careful it wasn't enough.

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

#356

Post by wtallis »

dcow wrote: post #312
seebs wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying is a reasonably fundamental part of research, but lying to humans can hurt them in various ways, and that's why we have human research ethics rules and standards that require an explicit process for obtaining consent to do something , even if we can't say what in advance, and debriefing and harm mitigation. Which the IRB missed because they didn't understand that, to ask questions about a website's policy, you…

That’s _not_ how it works. The fact that information comes from a human does not make something a human subject experiment. The information has to be about a human. Here the information is about a process for handling CCPA requests. We can argue about whether, in a single site operator case that also qualifies as information about a human since there’s no clear organizational policy, but I want to make it clear that…

> The fact that information comes from a human does not make something a human subject experiment. The information has to be about a human.

The experiment is collecting more information than just survey results about CCPA policies. They're also collecting and evaluating information about how humans respond to their legal threats vs how they respond to less pointed inquiries from academics. If this study was merely ordinary survey methodology with questions that aren't asking about humans, it wouldn't be human subject research. But they have actually gone outside the bounds of a mere survey with the deception and threats.

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

#357

Post by jollybean »

Ekaros wrote: post #286

I don't really see any issues with this. If you are subject to any of these rules you and your business should be ready. If not they shouldn't be a concern. Absolutely nothing unethical going on here. Apart from crap business not wanting to follow the legistlation.

Lying about one's identity is unethical.

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

#358

Post by smsm42 »

kstrauser wrote: post #348
dawnbreez wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone in another comment thread pointed out, the requirements also put you on the spot if 50,000 Cali citizens have personal data that you've got access to. And, as someone also pointed out in that thread, being on Hackernews and having IP logging may be enough to trigger that requirement. Further, with the absolute shitshow that is the US court system, if someone brings a frivolous suit you're looking at thousa…

I wrote the blog post from yesterday’s HN story, and that last paragraph is what worried me. I know I’m not a business, and I don’t make money from my project, and believe I’m not subject to the CCPA because of that. I dread the idea of having to prove that in court, though, and how expensive it might be to (hopefully!) prove I’m not liable for even accidentally violating it. There’s a reason patent trolls, copyright…

Patents and copyrights aren't limited to businesses, you can be in copyright or patent violation even if you're a private person - in fact, I'd assume vast majority of copyright violations now are performed by private people without profit motive. That particular law however is clearly written to target specific businesses and exclude private persons.

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

#359

Post by MR4D »

tiahura wrote: post #309
MR4D wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what they are doing. A lawsuit is explicit, as is a contract. But a Cease & Desist may or may not be explicit.

Then they’re not very good cease and desist letters. A C&D should state exactly what you are asking them to stop doing and exactly what will happen if they don’t. That way the other party can’t claim they didn’t understand later. Search C&D samples on google and see for yourself.

You mean like this?

“Your failure to abide by your Agreements will result in [redacted] pursuing any and all available remedies, including but not limited to injunctive relief and monetary damages.”

So, I don’t consider this very specific (you may, and that’s fine but then our disagreement is about something different).

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

#360

Post by Ekaros »

jollybean wrote: post #357
Ekaros wrote: post #286

I don't really see any issues with this. If you are subject to any of these rules you and your business should be ready. If not they shouldn't be a concern. Absolutely nothing unethical going on here. Apart from crap business not wanting to follow the legistlation.

Lying about one's identity is unethical.

So is not following laws... Or being certain that they don't apply.
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