[yebyen]

Some researcher who paid $40 to 100 people over the course of a year is going to go back and contact all of those same people again, to sign a release form, and they all have to use pencils... and nobody is going to call him out on it and ask why is it important that I sign this form with a pencil?

The fact that I actually agree with you, and think this might work in fact inside of any hospital in the US, says more about the byzantine complexity and scary state of our medical system than anything else.

Because I could totally see 100 people being told they have to sign a thing, while in a hospital, with absolutely no good reason given, ... and all 100 just signing it after some variable x*N amount of huffing, then get on with their day.