Comment by refulgentis
2 years ago
Thank you for the shift in tone: I'm honestly unsure what you mean, steelmanning: you worked as a consultant at a university and not all work you did involving experiments was for IRB experiments --- I guess what I'd say is, the fact you're able to make that distinction does seem to confirm my initial observation that the grandparent of my original post in this thread was drawing on IRB-style experiments to condemn excesses of colloquial-style experiments in tech.
No, there is no distinction between “IRB-style experiments” and “colloquial-style experiments.” Exactly the same experiment could be subject to IRB or not depending on who was running it. The distinction you’re trying to make does not exist.
> there is no distinction between “IRB-style experiments” and “colloquial-style experiments
Fascinating. How were you able to draw a distinction in your previous comment, then? :)
I didn’t. I drew a distinction between experiments subject to IRB and experiments not subject to IRB, not as a function of the type of experiment, but as a function of other factors—namely who is doing the experiment. I thought this was pretty clear:
> When I worked in my university’s statistical consulting center in graduate school I could have consulted on the same experiment either subject to IRB or not depending on who the client was.
(emphasis added). Somehow you misread it.
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