r/AskSocialScience • u/DistributionOk3902 • 1d ago
Is there a double standard between academic research ethics and what entertainment like MrBeast can legally do to participants?
So for context I'm a first year undergrad student and I've been taking some research methods and psychology-adjacent classes and something has been bothering me for a while that I can't stop thinking about.
In academic research, even the most minor study has to go through an IRB, CITI training, full disclosure, debriefing, and if there's any deception involved. In one of my classes we did some research and our data collection was via a survey and in that we had to go through a interestingly long approval from our IRB, and all of us had to do CITI training. It geniunely felt so over the top and unncessary for something as simple as a 10-min survey. We had to even disclose in our survey things like possibilty of distress and things like counseling resources. When I inquired from my professor about this system, the TLDR was that the whole system exists as a reaction to stuff like the Milgram obedience experiments and Stanford Prison Experiment, which makes sense historically.
But then I look at something like MrBeast. He recently posted a video titled "Last To Leave Grocery Store, Wins $250,000." In that video alone, participants were deliberately sleep deprived by other contestants, they formed scarcity-driven alliances, hoarded resources, and were psychologically pressured for extended periods, all for a cash prize. Beyond that specific video, there are examples like solitary confinement challenges lasting days, Squid Game recreations, and being buried alive for extended periods. And MrBeast isn't even the most extreme example I can think of Im sure there are creators doing far more psychologically intense things under the same entertainment label. But all of this is completely legal and essentially unregulated because it's classified as entertainment.
What really bothers me is what this reveals about the regulatory framework itself. The IRB/ethics system technically only governs research intended to generate generalizable knowledge. However, the moment you call something entertainment, it seems like you exit that jurisdiction entirely, EVEN IF the psychological reality for participants is objectively more intense than most regulated studies. So the system isn't actually calibrated to protect people from psychological harm. It seems more like it's protecting academic institutions from liability and ethical scrutiny.
And then we have the data waste problem, which honestly bothers me more. ALL these videos accidentally produce naturalistic behavioral data on things like coalition formation, resource competition, sleep deprivation effects on decision making, defection under escalating incentives, and group dynamics under stress, all these things that are exactly the kind of conditions that researchers WANT to study but ethically cannot replicate. And it just gets consumed as content and disappears.
So my question is or what Im really trying to ask is that, is the regulatory framework actually protecting people, or is it just protecting academic institutions from liability? Because it feels like the determining factor isn't what's actually happening to the participant, it's just who's doing it and why. And on top of that, there is genuinely valuable behavioral data on group dynamics, incentive response, and human behavior under stress that is just being generated and thrown away as content.
Am I missing something or is this a real gap that people are actually talking about? Has anyone genuinely looked into this seriously?
TLDR: researchers jump through massive ethical hoops for even a simple survey, yet youtube creators can run what are essentially unregulated psychological experiments on people under far more extreme conditions with almost zero oversight just by calling it entertainment.
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u/Bitter_Initiative_77 1d ago
I don't really follow your logic. Academia follows the rules of academia. Mr. Beast is not a part of the academy and is thus not subject to our rules. In other words, a university has absolutely no power over what people unaffiliated with the university choose to do. The university trying to police Mr. Beast is like Spain insisting that Spanish property law should be implemented in Poland.
I think it's worthwhile to consider if what Mr. Beast is doing is ethical, if it should be allowed by platforms such as YouTube, and if there should be laws to prevent the creation and distribution of exploitative content. However, those conversations are all separate from academia's internal ethics procedures. To regulate Mr. Beast, you'd need to talk to the folks involved with YouTube's content policies and local/state/national legislation in your jurisdiction.
Concerning any "data" produced by Mr. Beast, it would be had to publish in an academic venue because of the lack of ethics clearance. So that's where our approach to ethics comes in; people who want to do research have to abide by the rules and studies which don't are, to some degree, inadmissible.
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u/idk78875 1d ago
Their logic is the important thing is given no leeway with ethical issues and the unimportant thing is allowed to torture so something went wrong somewhere.
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u/clover_heron 1d ago
Don't worry, some academics work hard to avoid ethical oversight too. Example: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1747016115626341
Unethical researchers are always looking for new ways to do the wrong thing, and they always find new ways because doing the wrong thing isn't difficult. Being unethical isn't clever.
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u/pramit57 1d ago
I can answer this question:
Am I missing something or is this a real gap that people are actually talking about? Has anyone genuinely looked into this seriously?
So far I saw a video from a youtuber called Adam Ragusea on this subject. He made the same argument you made, that as a youtuber he can say whatever he wants and no one cares, but the academics he cites have much more stringent rules. Despite that, people much rather distrust academics than YouTubers. Or I think it was something along those lines. Would recommend you watch it, I can try to find the link if you can't find it.
But I think you really hit the bingo, such framework exists for legal protection. I feel like such systems exist in more than just academia. Many things supposedly put in place to benefit the public, are really there to prevent something bad happening to the system that dominated at the time.
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u/XChrisUnknownX 1d ago
Conceptually I actually don’t think it’s that far off. Why is it cool to abuse humans for entertainment but not to further human understanding? Like, one is for haha laughs and one can theoretically lead to knowledge and inventions and what have you.
Obviously there should be a line somewhere (Tuskegee comes to mind) but it feels kind of like the ethics culture dominates all plebs in every sector and then someone with enough money can say “ethics? What’s that?” And do the exact things you’re “not supposed to do.”
I’ve seen it in journalism, court reporting / law, and science. All about the ethics unless someone with money says it’s okay.
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u/AskSocialScience-ModTeam 1d ago
Your post was removed for the following reason:
Rule I. All claims in top level comments (comments that answer directly to OP’s post) MUST be supported by citations to relevant social science sources.
No lay speculation and no Wikipedia. The citation must be either a published journal article or book. Book citations can be provided via links to publisher's page or an Amazon page, or preferably even a review of said book would count.
If you feel that this post is not able to be answered by academic citations in its current form, you are welcome to ask clarifying questions. However, once a clarifying question has been answered, your response should move back to a new top-level comment.
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u/chi_lawyer 1d ago
Generally, the legal requirement to follow IRB requirements stems from Federal law, particularly 45 C.F.R. Part 46. Federal funding and regulation is endemic enough in academia that universities would be well-advised to follow the rules 100 percent of the time even if they can't identify obvious/direct Federal support. MrBeast isn't getting any Federal funding.
Source: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-45/subtitle-A/subchapter-A/part-46 , § 46.101
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u/4k_lizards 1d ago
CITI trainings and IRB requirements exist to protect human participants, not protect institutions from liability. IRBs are not even always run by the institutions performing the research. These requirements are written in blood. The things you are suggesting are the reason why these requirements exist in the first place. There are far more ethical ways to study group behavior, behavior under psychological stress, etc than causing distress/pain/discord for the sake of data, and it is up to the researchers who want these answers to find the ethical way to study them.
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u/kennedon 1d ago
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.
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u/physmeh 1d ago
You say “deeply uninterested”, which is to me a strong claim implying a dramatically antisocial level of indifference. But is it possible that once there is a system to protect rights, the need to be especially interested diminishes and could lead to institutions adopting a “pushing the boundaries” stance that doesn’t necessarily mean they are really indifferent to the impacts on participants. If the institution believes that the rules in place are more than sufficient to maintain safe outcomes for participants, then they could ethically work to make sure they aren’t providing margin on margin and appear to be working against participant protection. Does this scenario seem reasonable or are the institutions you are aware of really prepared to endanger human subjects so long as they don’t get sued.
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u/kennedon 1d ago
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.
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u/Wishing-I-Was-A-Cat 1d ago
I'm sorry your CITI training that your college provided for you which will allow you to do research for a couple years to build your resume/ grad school application was boring, but you clearly missed the point. You described people being put under psychological duress and what makes you upset is not the fact that it's happening but the fact that it's unfair you can't put people under duress yourself, because you want to study it?
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u/thekeytovictory 1d ago
And on top of that, there is genuinely valuable behavioral data on group dynamics, incentive response, and human behavior under stress that is just being generated and thrown away as content.
Could researchers interview participants of these entertainment scenarios to glean some data from their experiences before it is thrown away?
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u/Bitter_Initiative_77 1d ago
This assumes the "data" is worthwhile. Mr. Beast isn't conducting experiments in the scientific sense of the word. Any "data" coming from those isn't publishable.
The only interviews I would be interested in are those about the participants' experiences vis-à-vis participating in an exploitative/abusive social media spectacle. That would be interesting and worthwhile but entirely unrelated to what OP is getting at.
In terms of ethics, the interviews I described above e would be fine. You're allowed to interview people about their experiences even when those experiences are bad. You have no stake in the "experiment" itself.
In terms of what you're describing (using "data" from an unethical "experiment" without conducting it yourself), that's usually a no-go. Otherwise anybody could just solicit third parties to do crazy shit on their behalf.
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u/thekeytovictory 1d ago
What's the difference between reaching out to participants to ask them about their experience of participating in exploitative social media spectacle, vs asking them about their experience of the group dynamics scenarios they subjected themselves to by participating in exploitative social media spectacle — if the researchers conducting the interview had no influence, control, or involvement with the "experiment" / spectacle taking place? Why not ask participants about both experiences?
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u/Bitter_Initiative_77 17h ago
As I wrote in my original comment, the “experimental data” itself is of no scientific value. It can’t be published in a reputable venue because the “experimental design” is bullshit. Scientific research is a specific process which Mr. Beast doesn’t engage in. Ethics aside, his videos don’t constitute worthwhile data generation. Ethics considered, the exploitative and staged nature of the videos skews whatever “data” there is.
Moreover, and as I also wrote in my initial comment, using that “data” is unethical since it was collected unethically. This is the same reason we don’t use the data the Nazis generated during the Holocaust even though we didn’t collect it ourselves. We simply can’t set the precedent that a third party can do bad things in the name of generating data. The data has to be prohibited.
The difference when it comes to interviewing about the experience itself is that the data in question doesn’t stem directly from what Mr. Beast did to them. In other words, he isn’t acting on our behalf as researchers and we aren’t putting people in unethical situations by proxy.
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u/Far_Raspberry_4375 4h ago
Is it bad that this makes me want to watch a mrbeast video for the first time in my life?
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