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Comment by dr_dshiv | Hacker News Reader

I'd recommend reading up on why not all human subjects research requires informed consent. For instance, there are exceptions for human subjects research that takes place on normal educational practices. This carve out was made because of the difficulty of getting unanimous consent from all parents during normal classroom education. With greater oversight and full informed consent, a lot of educational research simply wouldn't happen.

So, to reframe this: "can you think of scenarios where institutional oversight could cause negative harms on society?" There are tradeoffs in ethical domains —and usually a lot of work has been done to find a middle ground.

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The example you gave is not relevant. The researchers in this study are already directly contacting everyone they need consent from, and if an individual declines, the rest of the sample can still be studied (unlike in a classroom setting, where everyone's physically in the same room and it's impossible to study any of them in isolation).

Further, the study would still have worked if the researchers had simply asked for the information as researchers, instead of lying about their identity and making thinly-veiled threats of legal action if the subject doesn't comply.

Heh, you should check out who you're replying to. He runs some kind of educational research platform.

I’m not defending their study and I feel like you are trying to argue “sides” rather than trying to understand my point about nuance.

I'm primarily concerned with the study, since A) that's the topic at hand, B) it involves technology and privacy, which I care about, and C) people keep comparing this to pentesting, just like last time, and I also care about security research.

I apologize for assuming that you were defending the study; I figured that was the topic of conversation, after all.

If there is nuance, but it does not apply to this situation, then it is worth saying that this nuance does not apply to this situation--so that I'm less likely to misinterpret what you're saying.

Wait, your motivating example is keeping parents out of the loop... do you give this example to show that it usually goes really bad when informed consent is missing? Or do you mean to argue that it's okay to experiment on kids without consent, because the end justifies the means? Or a third option, that I'm overlooking currently?

Yes, that’s correct. Because conducting experiments on things like “does this approach to teaching fractions work better” is important for society. The ends are good and the means are reasonable. We aren’t injecting kids with chemicals—we can only experiment with “normal” educational practice. It shows why nuance is important— and why requiring informed consent isn’t always the most ethical choice for society.

Ethical action involves nuance! It is very comforting to think that the world is black and white, good and bad. But it isn’t. Why is this so difficult to communicate?

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