Comment by chromatin
4 years ago
Wrong!
If you read the research paper linked in the lkml post, the authors at UMN state that they submitted their research plan to the University of Minnesota Institutional Research Board and received a human subjects exempt waiver.
A human subjects determination isn’t really an approval, just a note that the research isn’t HSR, which it sounds like this wasn’t.
It absolutely was human subject research. Try for yourself! Here's the NIH's rubric:
https://grants.nih.gov/policy/humansubjects/hs-decision.htm
for q1, the study collects data like observations of behavior, so we must answer yes.
for q2, none of the exemptions apply - it's not an educational setting, they're not sending a survey, it's not an observation of the public - they're interacting, and it's clear that these interactions are not benign - they have clear impact on the community. None of these exemptions apply.
Based on this flow, it's clear the study involves "human research".
Well it was, but not the type of thing that HSR would normally worry about.
That waiver was issued incorrectly. See my post in this same thread on why - essentially, if you do the NIH test, it's HSR.