IRBs are a net negative because really bad/unethical experiments are done with no oversight by private entities. Their only purpose is to keep ethicists employed.
That's a very naive view of the expanding bureaucracy which must grow to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
IRBs don't need to be ran by anyone more competent than a 5 year old to catch the cases you're talking about. What they have metastasis to today is just another part of the administrative industrial complex which has strangled academia.
The question is how do we get 5 year olds between planning an unethical experiment (consciously or not) and the means to such experiments financed with tax dollars?
Turns out 5 year olds might catch all the bad experiment but due to lack of understanding in the field they will also reject a lot of valid experiments. Domain experts and people who have thought a lot about ethics might have better false positive and false negative rates.
Regulating constraints which impose a prevention paradox is though and is vulnerable to over bureaucratisation. I am unaware how this is handled but you told me nothing convincing which indicates that there is no back pressure limiting how much bureaucracy can be created by IRB.
Seriously if you think that IRBs are anywhere near the top 100 of things that are strangling academia I'd like your job. There are so many other issues that are so much more important that, let's fix those first.
> really bad/unethical experiments are done with no oversight by private entities
Yes. For example, every time we see someone here talking about A/B testing, they're talking about human experimentation. Do these humans buy more often when shown A or B?
I consider it unethical as they don't even inform test subjects nor do they seek consent. Unfortunately, I seem to be a minority.
I don't think this argument invalidates the concept of review boards though. If anything it supports their expansion into national or international law.
I am grateful for the protection provided by IRBs and I understand exactly what kind of horrors they protect people from. They are an overwhelming positive force for good for science and society.
The basic argument here is that rules are ineffective because bad actors ignore them.
- Before IRBs, unethical experiments were done by professors and grad students with disposal to all of the resources they normally have.
- People don’t always know what the ethical implications of their study is, or how it could negatively impact participants.
- The IRBs are not there to stop research. They are there to help people figure out how to conduct research ethically.