Comment by mhalle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mhalle | Hacker News Reader

As a Senior House alum and former instructor at MIT, what bothers me the most is how MIT is teaching horrible standards of ethical behavior through their actions.

Improper use of metadata to track down individuals in a confidential survey about mental health and substance abuse would end a scientist's career. MIT did it.

Collective punishment of a group for the actions of a few is an educational and social antipattern. MIT did it.

An "end justifies means" mentality is a classic tool used by the strong against the powerless. MIT embraced it.

Removing completely innocent people from their homes and their supportive social structure, while MIT's right, would face justified outrage in any public context.

Using these tools on anyone, let alone the students you thought brilliant and worthy enough to admit, teaches a mindset abusive of power and lacking in humanity. A mindset that is all too common in our society.

MIT has plenty of honorable and fair people. If they didn't know enough to stand up for Senior House specifically, why didn't they stand up against the tools that the administration used that they know are wrong?

I have found "we teach as we live, we live as we teach" a pretty powerful and positive philosophy.

I'm not sure how I feel about Senior House overall, but the misuse of the survey data enraged me. We have such a hard time getting people at MIT to seek help for mental health issues and stupid bullshit like this is exactly why. People should not he punished for trying to seek help, health data should never be shared with people who are not health care professionals, and it's astoundingly unethical to use people's health care data or metadata to run studies without their explicit consent.

Completely agree, and it puts this aspect of the case into an interesting legal realm. There is certainly a question of misuse of protected health information, which can be treated quite harshly by the US government, especially when involving potentially vulnerable populations.

I don't know if this question has been investigated.

> I don't know if this question has been investigated.

One should hope that this will be thoroughly investigated, lest we set precedent on an issue that leads to so many worrisome open doors for abuse in the future. These are not medical professionals bound by an oath and consequences; this feels like where I draw the line.

Edited to add: http://fdsal.com/doc/

From that link, it seems there's evidence MIT did not actually anonymize the data -- i.e., used non-aggregated data and violated explicit guarantees of anonymity, so my analysis below seems irrelevant.

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Data aggregation / anonymization and the ease of de-aggregating reveals a major loophole in current US health privacy regulation (HIPAA). Once aggregated, personal health information (PHI) loses most protection.

So, here if the mental health team aggregated the data, that is 'ok'. Then sharing that aggregated data with administrators is also 'ok' because it's no longer PHI. The exception would be if the disclosures of the mental health department to its patients prohibited this use of the data.

I don't see a crime here, other than moral.

Anecdote: I have sat across the table from a health data purveyor whose entire business model is buying aggregated data from multiple sources, de-anonymizing and monetizing it (for ad-based stuff and risk-scoring for life insurance and key man insurance provider type customers). That was a few years ago and I believe there has been some guidance that would make that business model much more difficult today if it was ever legal. We didn't get past the discussion phase based on that model's risk to our patient-centric model.

I'm a lawyer in healthcare turned dev, but readily admit not to be a health law expert. Most of my work was corporate and transactional, so please take my opinion above with a healthy dose of salt. And if I'm wrong or have woefully outdated info, please correct!

What happened to the MIT Administration? Ever since Aaron Swartz death, it seems the administration of the school has been corrupted by some influence.

My guess is that, like so many universities in this country, the administration is not answerable to students or even alumni.

Undergrad students are a nuisance for a school like MIT nowadays. These are giant research corporations masquerading as academic institutions.

This is unfortunately too close to the truth. While there are still many who enjoy teaching and guiding undergraduates, a Professors life is consumed by first, the pursuit of tenure and then the pursuit of more and more research funding for projects (not to mention doing the actual research). In that context, issues with undergraduate administration seem like an unsavory part of their jobs: often, offering very little in returns.

Professors aren't the ones dealing with undergraduates, it's the administration. The administration is answering to the MIT Corporation and the Board of Directors, whose interest has long become to grow the "investment vehicle" (endowment, professorial industry nexus, bureaucracy, etc.) through commercial and real-estate ventures, patents, and the cultivation of the brand. Students, graduate or undergraduate, and their lives are all nuisance, and you can tell from how they are treated in financial transactions relative to the aforementioned beneficiaries on whose behalf the Institute truly works.

You must have had a different interaction with the MIT Corp: I've found that they have nothing other than the best interests of MIT at heart. Most of the members are alums, and several of them have made very significant donations (with not a whole lot of recognition imo.)

I'm not saying the MIT Corp hasn't made mistakes, but I've never questioned their motives for doing the right thing.

I don't even think you are contradicting me here. It's just that "MIT" has grown to be a lot lot more than educating its students (for better or for worse), and its ... "interests" much more varied as a result. After all, the students are there for a few years and then leave. Who are the real long-term stakeholders here? As I pointed out already, it's the bureaucracy, the professors, all the commercial interests wanting in on the MIT pie, and an institutional leadership interested in all the powers that accrue to overseeing a larger endowment with a greater capital return.

How MIT's immediate neighborhood has developed into an unlivable office park is a vivid example of what I say.

This is so true. My opinion is that the MIT administration does not give a damn about undergraduate students.

The legal doctrine under which the MIT administration feels pruessure to do these things is called In Loco Parentis and its incarnation at MIT is particularly influenced by the death of Scott Krueger[1]. MIT has to at least appear[2] to be taking issues of student safety and the use of intoxicating substances seriously.

[1] http://news.mit.edu/1998/da-0923 [2] In the aftermath of a GHB overdose incident at Senior House's annual party Steer Roast in spring of 2008, there were rumblings that Steer Roast would be prohibited. I was part of a group working with the administration to allow Roast to continue. Rather than being just a CYA, The members of the administration whom I worked with appeared to genuinely and sincerely care about safety in this domain.

MIT doesn't have to act in loco parentis for anyone over the age of majority (18). Anyone over 18 is an adult, and making their own choices. This happens to be the baseline age for most college entrants.

I don't know what agreements are in place, if any, for younger students.

The latest iteration of this conflict, banning freshman from SH was one of the early stages.

You are forgetting Star Simpson 5 years earlier. MIT was always like that.

Several professors spoke out against President Hockfield's quickly formulated comments against Star. Patrick Winston, who received his BS, MS, and PhD at MIT before joining the faculty, is among them.

The problem with MIT is that while MIT students are well, MIT students, and MIT faculty are MIT faculty, MIT administrators are generic college administrators, hopping from school to school as they hunt chances at promotion.

This is especially true of the curricular administrators in the registrar's office, and S^3. You find a lot of folks in positions of authority who just don't get what it's like to be an undergraduate student at MIT.

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