For over two years, my Substack has relentlessly chronicled a saga involving a team of Yale economists who illegally hacked a prominent economics forum.
"Economics Job Market Rumors (EJMR) is an anonymous online forum and clearinghouse for information about the academic job market for economists. It also includes speech that is considered abusive, defamatory, racist, misogynistic, or otherwise “toxic”. Using computational methods new to economics, we geolocate the majority of EJMR posts and show that posting on the platform is wide-spread in academia : 10% of posts originate from universities including all top-ranked universities in the United States. A substantial number of posts also come from government agencies, companies, and non-profit organizations employing economists."
I suspect they did not do IRB because this started out NOT as research but as a vengeance project intended for a Twitter audience. They may have gotten themselves into extra trouble by retroactively turning it into research after getting slammed for doing Twitter audience vengeance stuff (“no no it was srs bsns research all along not avenging wounded vanity”)
That they used work equipment to do it, even if that work equipment is higher tech computing stuff than usual, might not matter. I look up vengeful personal vanity stuff on my work computer all the time and so does everybody.
The hacking might be illegal either way, I am not equipped to judge.
Well done Chris. Great work here.
"Economics Job Market Rumors (EJMR) is an anonymous online forum and clearinghouse for information about the academic job market for economists. It also includes speech that is considered abusive, defamatory, racist, misogynistic, or otherwise “toxic”. Using computational methods new to economics, we geolocate the majority of EJMR posts and show that posting on the platform is wide-spread in academia : 10% of posts originate from universities including all top-ranked universities in the United States. A substantial number of posts also come from government agencies, companies, and non-profit organizations employing economists."
https://www.chrisbrunet.com/p/yale-university-vows-to-geolocate
This is helpful in getting caught up.
I suspect they did not do IRB because this started out NOT as research but as a vengeance project intended for a Twitter audience. They may have gotten themselves into extra trouble by retroactively turning it into research after getting slammed for doing Twitter audience vengeance stuff (“no no it was srs bsns research all along not avenging wounded vanity”)
That they used work equipment to do it, even if that work equipment is higher tech computing stuff than usual, might not matter. I look up vengeful personal vanity stuff on my work computer all the time and so does everybody.
The hacking might be illegal either way, I am not equipped to judge.
My comment was to the poster who goes by the name “grow up, son”
Or… do your own homework…. Don’t sit there waiting to be fed… go on the prowl.
I’m not the one publishing a story, claiming bullshjt in the title that I haven proven.
Well over 20 years ago, my daughter needed review by an IRB for a Science Fair project in 11th grade involving human subjects (high school students).
It is beyond belief that highly credentialed academic professionals never learned about their essential responsibilities.
All you provide is an image of her name, and your unsupported claim that she wrote “we are investigating”.
Either stick with the actual facts, or provide the evidence.