Responses to the study have been overwhelmingly positive, and I particularly appreciate the notes of encouragement that some websites have sent. We look forward to sharing results in the coming year, with the goals of identifying best practices and informing future policy making.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RossTeixeira/status/1471249557883...
That's excessive, crosses into personal attack, and breaks the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Please make your substantive points without stooping to that.
This is not a site for stirring up internet mobs. We're trying to avoid the online callout/shaming culture here.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...
7 days ago my response to this study included that the "vague legal threat at the end of your mail is immoral and gross". I guess he considered that a positive.
If it’s the latter, I wonder if it would be more effective to bring this incident (and the apparent ineffectiveness of Princeton’s IRB) to the attention of the NIH. I would think the prospect of putting all that grant money in jeopardy would cause people in high places to take notice.
I personally didn’t incur any monetary costs, just a lot of unnecessary stress.
That makes it seem unlikely he was unaware of the negative responses to his study.
In fact it is a surprisingly common phenomenon.
The "secret shopper" justification for not informing participants ahead of time about the study can only take him so far, and I don't think it was necessary here to begin with. His research is to determine the policies in place at target recipients' organizations, and that doesn't require secrecy. In fact that justification undermines the exemption status of the study: he expected that people may react differently if they thought it was a user vs. a research study.