Did University of Minnesota have any type of IRB? I sorta hope this can be the "come to Jesus moment" for academic CS to implement safeguards (such as IRBs) to prevent harm.
If it was not a human study, then why couldn't they just stimulate it on a computer where the maintainers are completely uninvolved? Obviously that's not possible. Why? Because they were studying the humans themselves. This is so clear even from the apology email that is the topic of this thread, I don't understand how people are still confused here.
This is not a US patent grant where simply adding "yeah that but on a computer" gives you an instant rubber stamp.