In which Scott Alexander bitches about badly-run studies and then creates his own badly-run study

I'm not a medical professional. I did acoustics. And I could tell you all the HIPAA-violating shit he tried to pull. This is fifteen hundred words of "I know better" and "so I was shocked to find out that the agency protecting my hospital from liability disagrees."

HIPAA ain't about your ability to double-test suicidal patients to shit on someone else's tool. It's about protecting patients from abuse of their data. And if your patients are in an environment where you aren't comfortable giving them a pen, your patients are in an environment where their ability to consent can rightfully be questioned by a review board, who will question the validity of your study.

Sure - it should be an easy study. It should cost less than a thousand dollars for a wheelbarrow tire when you put it on an airplane, too, but the FAA cares about such things because the stakes are high. And when HIPAA violations cost $10k to $50k per instance, the review board cares, too.