[mannykannot]

The point is that the decision should not have been unilateral - the author and his colleague had a very good case for their position, based on the fact that they were not asking anything that was not being asked anyway, and not recording anything that was not being recorded anyway. It was mindless dogma on the part of the IRB that made it unilateral. Meanwhile, a practice with a real potential for risk went unstudied.

You might argue that there was risk to the patients in the one part of the procedure that was different than what they would experience anyway - the actual asking for consent - but if so, what would you propose doing about it?

You have made a straw man out of this one case, and are defending it with all the dogma displayed by this IRB.