The TAB report on the UMN affair

Posted May 6, 2021 9:51 UTC (Thu) by rmayr (subscriber, #16880)
In reply to: The TAB report on the UMN affair by epa
Parent article: The TAB report on the UMN affair

[Full disclosure: I am one of the four researchers who originally raised the concern to IEEE S&P chairs in November.]

Oh, yes, this is very much considered to have been intentional research on human subjects. It doesn't only require (potential) bodily harm, but any harmful effect that can be caused by an experiment without consent - wasted time included - is unethical. By this definition, experimenting on consumers with prices is also not on the positive side of an ethical debate, though many businesses operate that way right now. In this particular case, the research was not only intentional, but intentionally deceiving, which is a step up from neutral changes to watch for an effect.

However, the important part here is that, in pretty much all democratic/liberal countries with universities funded by public money, academic research is held to a much higher standard than private businesses. Research on human subjects requires their explicit, informed consent or, in *very* limited exceptions where that consent would undermine the research goal that is in the overarching public interest, close oversight by an independent committee. An academic research group can absolutely not decide by themselves if their human subjects experiments are ethical or not, and which safeguards to put in place.

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The TAB report on the UMN affair

Posted May 6, 2021 10:34 UTC (Thu) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (2 responses)

I agree that academic research is held to a higher standard and I don't doubt the researchers might be in trouble with their ethics committee (or the committee will be in trouble for having issued a waiver). What I find odd is people who have no connection to the university or academia sticking their noses in and denouncing the researchers for perceived violations of some ethics code. Surely that's a sideshow. After all the intentionally broken commits could equally have come from a private individual or even someone working undercover for an intelligence agency.

Thanks for the clarification that it is indeed considered research on a human subject. I think it is a mistake to group this kind of tail-tweaking with real nonconsensual experiments forbidden by the Nuremberg Code (which very clearly is talking about medical experimentation). But then, I'm not part of the ethics committee either, so I'm not really qualified to comment.

The TAB report on the UMN affair

Posted May 8, 2021 17:39 UTC (Sat) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (1 responses)

> After all the intentionally broken commits could equally have come from a private individual or even someone working undercover for an intelligence agency.

Such a person would have been banned from submitting patches and that would have been the end of it. Indeed, that's *precisely* what happened in this case, except that everybody decided that "UMN banned" is news, whereas "John Smith banned" is not news.

The TAB report on the UMN affair

Posted May 11, 2021 6:15 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

I'm saying that intentionally broken patches could have come from a bad actor who didn't go on to disclose that they were bad and publish a paper about it. Most likely they would never be spotted.

The TAB report on the UMN affair

Posted May 7, 2021 2:18 UTC (Fri) by tytso (✭ supporter ✭, #9993) [Link]

UMN, even in their most recent response, has claimed that it isn't considered Human Subject Research, so they disagree with you. I think they are full of sh*t, but they almost had to make that claim, given that the Hypocrite Commit work was funded by an NSF grant, and if they admitted that it was subject to the HSR rules, then (a) their IRB would probably in deep doodoo, and (b) they might have to refund their grant money to the NSF, and/or be subject to various disciplinary actions from the NSF. It's my understanding that a complaint has reached the NSF, and it'll be interesting to see what the good folks at NSF think of UMN's claim of, "no HSR work here"!

The TAB report on the UMN affair

Posted May 7, 2021 16:18 UTC (Fri) by nedu (guest, #50951) [Link] (2 responses)

> [Full disclosure: I am one of the four researchers who originally raised the concern to IEEE S&P chairs in November.]

You wrote "November" here, but in the TAB report, I'm seeing a Dec 1 event in the "Timeline of events".

| 2020 Dec 1:
| - Sarah Jamie Lewis & others send a letter to IEEESSP.
| https://hackmd.io/s/BJGs6Tfiw

What looks like an email published at that url seems to be undated.

Metadata in the source of that webpage seems to support a December 1, 2020 publication date. Or, simply hovering over /changed 5 months ago/ results in a tooltip.

Anyhow, this event in the TAB report's timeline is what you're referring to?

[Yesterday, I sent you an email asking about this.]

The TAB report on the UMN affair

Posted May 7, 2021 16:45 UTC (Fri) by deater (subscriber, #11746) [Link] (1 responses)

it depends if you count tweeting at the paper authors "reporting"

here's discussion of the issue in November
https://twitter.com/SarahJamieLewis/status/13306189193762...
after the paper authors had deleted the original tweet.

The TAB report on the UMN affair

Posted May 7, 2021 19:27 UTC (Fri) by nedu (guest, #50951) [Link]

As it turns out, I received an email from Rene this morning (7 May 2021 08:25:25 +0000), but entirely due to my own fault, I hadn't yet seen that reply when I posted my comment about 8 hours later.

Nevertheless, I do hope Rene takes the opportunity to discuss these late November thru first of December events here.

The email referenced in the TAB report itself contains a link to an archived Twitter exchange from 21 - 22 November 2020.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201122173246/https://twitte...

Please do scroll up to see the beginning of that Twitter exchange -- although I'm interested in discussing Kangjie Lu's tweet at the bottom, where he says, among other things:

> The paper will be available soon. [...] I can share a copy with you in email.