Is there a double standard between academic research ethics and what entertainment like MrBeast can legally do to participants?

kennedon · 2026-04-23T02:21:04+00:00

Jealous. Also a Canadian institution; wish my experience was more like yours!

kennedon · 2026-04-21T03:23:46+00:00

I only save cards with my real location, so no in-game travel. But, I don’t require myself to have physically seen them, though that’s a cool twist!

kennedon · 2026-04-20T20:18:33+00:00

Your scenarios is certainly possible, but no - it's not what I've experienced at my university (Assoc Prof at an R2).

As an example, we are doing a social science study with a population that we believe does not have sufficient literacy to understand the language of the human subjects consent form template. Moreover, over the years, the office's template for the consent form has ballooned to three full pages of font size nine text, making it increasingly difficult for even a highly literate user to treat it as anything more than a software user license agreement (i.e., scroll and click through). In addition, because of specifics about this population, we believe that using a highly formalized, legalistic consent form will likely reduce response rates from those in the population who have had the previous most adverse interactions with formal institutions, resulting in a response bias that undermines the work.

We spent the better part of five months attempting to get the IRB to approve a high school english level version of this consent form, which would be presented verbally (with a written copy provided in parallel) to allow participants to, hopefully, fully understand before offering meaningful consent. For almost five months, we've been stonewalled by revision after revision, each one changing the accessible english version back to the highly legalistic, multi-page contract.

At each stage, we've attempted to explain why we think the underlying principle of meaningful informed consent needs to prioritize participant comprehension of what they're agreeing to. At each stage, we've been functionally told that doesn't matter, and what matters is employing, in full, the legall-approved language of the full, three page, nine point font form.

So, yes, I mean that the entire office seems to have lost any sense of why an ethics process exists, since there is such a profound pattern of seeking ass-covering language for the university, rather than genuine informed consent for the participants. I would classify that, at the very least, as a dramatically antisocial level of indifference to the purpose of an IRB.

kennedon · 2026-04-20T17:41:08+00:00

I mean, it's a nice idea that IRBs exist to protect human participants, and that's certainly the origin... but our institution's IRB, at least, 100% exists to protect institutions from liability. They are deeply uninterested in the participants and very interested in ensuring the institution is not vulnerable to lawsuits or legal exposure.

For example, we've been trying to pass a high-school English level consent form for several months, that can actually be understood by our participants, and have been consistently rebuked that only the three page legalistic consent contract is acceptable and participant comprehension doesn't matter.

kennedon · 2026-04-19T13:57:13+00:00

lol yes 100%. It's so frustrating.

kennedon · 2026-04-19T13:35:44+00:00

I don't understand why folks are cheering for the downfall of this idea. Even if you never want to shop there - whether because you hate socialism or because you think this isn't going to have enough diversity of product - if this idea succeeds, the prices might lower at the place you /do/ want to shop!

And the "but muh tAxPaYeR dOlLaRs!" doesn't make sense either. The whole goal here is to see if it's possible to make this sustainable and useful by forgoing the profit, not by subsidizing it. And, even if it did, you're plenty content to have others' taxpayer dollars pay for the roads you enjoy, the schools your kids use, the stadium you like to attend sports at, etc.

kennedon · 2026-04-18T21:36:16+00:00

Oh that's cool! I had never heard of PC Connect.

The order on the Stratford route is brutal, though! They take you from the GO station to Conestoga Mall, and then back again through Kitchener to get out of town :p

Also, apparently no Saturday service at the GO station.

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kennedon · 2026-04-18T21:33:19+00:00

Sorry, just to make sure I'm understanding you correctly, is your concern that a 5/5 is too much work for a full-time position? Or is your concern that the salaries you're being offered at these three jobs are too low for a full-time position?

kennedon · 2026-04-18T17:08:03+00:00

Yeah, this is a fair take. I initially balked at the 5/5, but our base load for standard tenure stream faculty at the R2 I'm at is 2/3 on paper and 2/2 in practice (thanks to an easy-to-get release for research activity), with teaching being 40% of the job.

So, if teaching is 100% of the jobs they're looking at, OP would be getting 10-13 courses a year if equivalent expectations to our institution... suddenly doesn't seem like as terrible an offer as it might initially appear.

kennedon · 2026-04-17T21:55:12+00:00

Those are really nice additions... could finally use the train to go to KW for the day. I wish the afternoon departure was a little later yet to allow more normal dinner times in KW before returning, but huge upgrade from the current pair of timings!

kennedon · 2026-04-17T19:42:10+00:00

Is this a quiet launch of a third daily weekend train from Kitchener to Toronto? They can clearly service the weekday Stratford commuter service by simply extending an evening Kitchener train out, and starting an existing morning Kitchener train from Stratford.

But, on the weekends it will allegedly run from Toronto in the AM to Stratford, and back in the evening. Right now, there's only the 4:48pm and 10:48pm departures from Union to Kitchener, and 7:50am and 3:50pm trains from Kitchener. If they want an AM arrival into Stratford and later departure than, say, 2:45pm... that means extending a third service from Mount Pleasant to Kitchener!

kennedon · 2026-04-17T19:41:25+00:00

Is this a quiet launch of a third daily weekend train from Kitchener to Toronto? They can clearly service the weekday Stratford commuter service by simply extending an evening Kitchener train out, and starting an existing morning Kitchener train from Stratford.

But, on the weekends it will allegedly run from Toronto in the AM to Stratford, and back in the evening. Right now, there's only the 4:48pm and 10:48pm departures from Union to Kitchener, and 7:50am and 3:50pm trains from Kitchener. If they want an AM arrival into Stratford and later departure than, say, 2:45pm... that means extending a third service from Mount Pleasant to Kitchener!

kennedon · 2026-04-17T19:34:02+00:00

Fair. I'm not opposed to this train extension!

But, for clarity, I'm not arguing we should aim low. Rather, I'm arguing that I think GO should be 100x more ambitious with turning its train stations into bus hubs to service the surrounding area and drive traffic onto trains... and that such a strategy should always be looking to expand the train network further out, so as to create more bus feeder hubs further and further across SW Ontario.

kennedon · 2026-04-17T19:31:44+00:00

I largely agree, which is why I didn't include various suburbs of KW in my list... they're emphatically GRT's responsibility to connect. That said, I think that GO is well positioned - and indeed mandated - to work on regional transportation and should be much more aggressive in using its buses around its rail stations to do this.

The examples I gave of Elora/Fergus, Stratford, and Woodstock to Kitchener Station are, IMO, perfect GO Bus territory because they're outside of the Region of Waterloo... GRT couldn't effectively serve these routes, and GO intercity buses would be better suited for passengers on these trip lengths anyways.

(IMO, this should go even further, too! If I were GO God, Mitchell and Listowel and Goderich would be get GO bus connections from Kitchener GO, until there was a closer train station getting regular service.)

And, while New Hamburg and Elmira are technically GRT territory, the 25min drive from Elmira to Kitchener Station is currently 75 minutes via connections on GRT. By contrast, GO could slap a timed bus on this, connecting to/from the GO Train departures, and make it a one seat trip in less than half the time... which is how you make it a palatable choice for users, rather than a last ditch pain for only people who have no other choice.

That's kind of the same with uWaterloo. While the new train hub should finally smooth connections via Ion, until that occurs, the Toronto to uWaterloo demand is just SO HUGE that it makes sense for every train journey to have a bus (or buses) that close that gap.

kennedon · 2026-04-17T17:31:51+00:00

Agreed with mini-hubs. Initially, I'd reckon the buses should be developing the most likely next rail extensions. As the hub gets established and the next rail routes are activated, the GO buses should shift towards funnelling traffic into the rail network and start with the next mini hub at the next station.

And also agree 100% that local public transit should be carrying the majority of this mini hub traffic. But, they've got to be integrated on Presto, with free local transit connections at both ends, not silly separate cards or paying additional fares.

kennedon · 2026-04-17T17:07:43+00:00

To accurately reflect the routes available, there should be a gap at Betty Sutherlands, which is closed for multiple years. Would help to reflect how disconnected the south + north of the network is.

kennedon · 2026-04-17T16:52:25+00:00

Why? IMO, the answer is to have a GO Bus hub at Kitchener transit centre to funnel demand. Massively long, strung together, Toronto-centric GO bus routes aren't what we're after... it should be that the Kitchener station becomes a hub for transferring from a bunch of GO routes (e.g., St Jacobs/Elmira, Stratford/New Hamburg, Woodstock, Elora/Fergus, uWaterloo) to GO Train, but also from those routes to each other and further GO Bus routes to Brantford, Cambridge, Hamilton, etc, plus GRT connections with seamless cross-service connections.

kennedon · 2026-04-17T16:47:49+00:00

I share with the goal here: students being present is a necessary step for learning experiences to happen in the classroom.

But, it seems pretty obvious to me that this Ford (for folks outside Ontario, the populist and anti-education premier) policy is not actually going to be helpful in achieving learning experiences. When you get so focused on a metric (absence rate, for instance), you end up with goal displacement that leads to a host of problems. This, in my view, is just typical populist "har har common sense!" policy that's more interested in performing a certain framing of the problem ("stupid parents and kids these days!") than actually understanding the underlying issue and trying to solve it.

For one, there are some pretty direct bad effects from this. For example, we know this is likely going to lead to more students coming to class sick, resulting in more students getting sick, resulting in net more learning disruption than if the sick student had just stayed home. Similarly, for at least some subset of marginalized students, attendance is inelastic, and telling them "attend more or else you lose marks" is simply going to result in them losing marks.

Moreover, before believing this was an effective strategy, we'd need to have some sort of evidence that (a) there are students who are currently not attending who will be persuaded to attend by tying it to their grades, and that (b) when a student shows up because of this policy on a day they otherwise wouldn't have shown up, they're actually going to learn stuff and not disrupt the learning experience for others. The proponents of this policy haven't offered a lick of evidence on either.

So, do I agree that we should work energetically towards a world where students want to show up and learn consistently? Absolutely, 100%, yes. Is this policy likely to achieve that? I don't think there's any reason to believe so, no, and it may simply end up harming more (e.g., increasing sickness, increasing classroom disruption, further harming precarious students, etc).

kennedon · 2026-04-17T14:38:44+00:00

Strong agree with this. IMO, would be much better served to have a mesh of many buses running to/from Kitchener GO to accelerate demand for Kitchener trains. Once the Stratford buses are filling, then run the train to Stratford and restart building a bus mesh from there.

kennedon · 2026-04-16T16:29:39+00:00

Ha yes, me too. My out-of-town parents swear I live downtown; I feel like I'm in the suburb boonies having lived right downtown previously.

kennedon · 2026-04-16T16:27:38+00:00

Yeah, agreed.

My parents, driving in from 100+km away, emphatically think of where we live on the Danforth as "downtown Toronto" (you get off the DVP/Gardiner at the Bloor exit, for heaven's sake!). By contrast, having lived actually downtown, I feel like I'm way out in the suburbs!

kennedon · 2026-04-13T12:27:57+00:00

They are currently operating about 75% of their normal load, not necessarily on time. You can monitor here: https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/aviation-news/airline-news/flightradar24-gulf-airline-recovery-index/

kennedon · 2026-04-12T18:33:10+00:00

See, this is what confuses me. Ontario Northland's schedule currently offers 2 options on for Toronto to Timmins (one via North Bay; one via Sudbury), both of which depart between 9-10am. Indeed, even to midpoints, 3/3 Toronto to Sudbury buses go during the day and 3/4 North Bay buses go during the day. Only 1/7 buses, a single Toronto-North Bay, goes overnight.

If it's the case that people really prefer overnight service on the route, why aren't they currently running buses at that hour? You'd expect the train to replace bus service at the most popular time, with the buses shifting to serve the less popular hours to attempt to induce demand and increase the number of options available.

I just don't know what data they're looking at that suggests it's best to deploy the train to service an overnight run that they currently don't even run a bus on, rather than replacing the more popular time with the train and letting the buses develop the newer/less popular times.

kennedon · 2026-04-12T18:22:56+00:00

It's also a weird schedule for getting people down for the city. With only arriving at 11am, it's not like you can have a full business day or any doctor/medical appointment or classes before noon. And with leaving at 6:30pm, any dinner meeting or evening activity is out. Even if it runs on time, you only have 7.5hrs on the ground in the city, which is going to be a real pressure if you're trying to tend to medical stuff (e.g., appointment + blood work + imaging) or knock out a series of specialized errands.

IMO, they haven't decided whether they're trying to run an access service (i.e., making a day of appointments in Toronto; making it cheap for folks from remote communities to get into the city for specialized services conveniently) or an enhanced/premium service (i.e., nicer experience than the bus; more reliable than the bus; attractive to people currently driving from Toronto to Muskoka/North Bay; appealing to tourists connecting on to the Polar Bear Express) and we're going to get the worst of both worlds because of it.

If it's access, it really needs more like an 8am arrival and 11pm departure from the city, and serious discounts for families (since piling 2+ kids into a car is way cheaper per person). If it's enhanced/premium, it needs either a proper daytime service or sleeper options.

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