Comment by nkurz
4 years ago
> The IRB of University of Minnesota reviewed the procedures of the experiment and determined that this is not human research.
I'm not sure how it affects things, but I think it's important to clarify that they did not obtain the IRB-exempt letter in advance of doing the research, but after the ethically questionable actions had already been taken:
The IRB of UMN reviewed the study and determined that this is not human research (a formal IRB exempt letter was obtained). Throughout the study, we honestly did not think this is human research, so we did not apply for an IRB approval in the beginning. ... We would like to thank the people who suggested us to talk to IRB after seeing the paper abstract.
https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kjlu/papers/clarifications-hc....
I'm a bit shocked that the IRB gave an exemption letter - are they hoping that the kernel maintainers won't take the (very reasonable) step towards legal action?
What "legal action" do you think applies here?
Intentional misrepresentation that causes harm is commonly referred to as “fraud.”
I don't think any legal actions need to be taken. UMN can longer participate. Tough shit.
2 replies →
I'd guess they may not have understood what actually happened, or were leaning heavily on the IEEE reviewers having no issues with the paper, as at that point it'd already been excepted.