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Comment by masnick | Hacker News Reader

Human subjects research has ethical obligations that at times go beyond what seems like common sense, but are still really important because of past ethical abuses. See http://www.maxmasnick.com/2014/06/28/facebook/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7959941

In this case, I don't think there was actual risk but just reading the PNAS paper it doesn't sound like the study went through the proper process. If it was reviewed by an IRB then it did go through the proper process and it's ethically sound, but a PR nightmare.

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Facebook altering it's block-box proprietary algorithm for what to show is something it does every day. That can't be unethical by itself.

It's possible that for it to be published, a higher standard would be needed. That is, the actions they took were ethical, but perhaps inappropriate for scientific publication.

But, if that were the case, the peer reviewers and the journal in which it was published should have flagged that. That it was published shows they didn't have any significant concerns.

> It's possible that for it to be published, a higher standard would be needed. That is, the actions they took were ethical, but perhaps inappropriate for scientific publication.

> But, if that were the case, the peer reviewers and the journal in which it was published should have flagged that. That it was published shows they didn't have any significant concerns.

This would not be a scientific ethics issue if they explained their IRB review in the manuscript. It is so unusual to not do this that it is a reasonable assumption something funny is going on, in my experience.

For example, the journal could be incentivized to look the other way in order to publish a high publicity article. I'm NOT saying that's what PNAS did, but just because something is published doesn't mean it's ethical. (See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20137807)

Fair point, yes, it is not evidence of it being ethical or even of PNAS believing it was ethical. But it's reasonable to assume that a high-profile journal like PNAS is extremely aware of the relevant ethical considerations, and likely (but not certaintly) would not violate them.

Then why did they let the manuscript go to press without the "this study was reviewed by the University of Somewhere IRB (protocol #XXXX) and was ruled exempt" sentence?

I see this enough in papers that it seems pretty standard to me, and it especially makes sense in a paper where the editors think there are potential ethical issues.

If I was an author of this paper, I would have actually spent a sentence or two explaining why there was not a risk to human subjects, etc.

The way they address this by basically saying it is ok because of the ToS that no one reads is the worst possible way to handle this. It seems to me more like no one thought about it at all than that the editors carefully considered it. I just don't see how you get from recognizing big ethical issues to not even addressing them in the manuscript.

> Facebook altering it's block-box proprietary algorithm for what to show is something it does every day. That can't be unethical by itself.

Why not?

Well, it could be, but (1) a commercial site optimizing itself seems quite reasonable, and (2) the public knew they were optimizing themselves, and did not complain in any significant way.

That "optimization" might be reasonable does not imply that any method is, "optimization" is not an actual activity, but a label for the purpose of a wide variety of things you can do. Murdering your competitors is also good for "optimizing" your bottom line, but still unethical, to put it mildly.

Also, I strongly doubt that the public has any clue of what facebook is doing. For all the public knows and understands, facebook could be employing magic message fairies.

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