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   Mark Gritter (markgritter@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Monday, 28-Apr-2025 11:01:13 JST Mark Gritter

   This is yet another case of an IRB basically deciding that people on the internet aren't real: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1k8b2hj/meta_unauthorized_experiment_on_cmv_involving/

   I am reminded of the University of Minnesota experiment a few years ago that sent deliberately bad patches to the Linux kernel, and the IRB decided this wasn't "human experimentation" so no consent was necessary: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/30/22410164/linux-kernel-university-of-minnesota-banned-open-source

   This should be obvious to everybody in the year 2025, but if it would be unethical to involuntarily subject a visitor to your campus to an experiment, then it is also unethical to do it on a message board or email list. You cannot enroll subjects in interventional studies without their consent. This should be absolutely clear to everyone on the IRB. But because you put the Internet in the middle, somehow they end up deciding it's OK after all.

   You also should not perform experiments that violate the rules of the space you're operating in! That's also an ethical principle. These boundaries are also not less real because they are on the Internet.