[remexre]

The point of an IRB is to act as an outside reviewer of _ethics_. IRBs aren't some checklist thing admin put in to protect the University's reputation, they exist as a direct reaction to huge amounts of unethical human experimentation occurring last century.

[jovial_cavalier]

The point of an IRB is to stop you from nonconsentually sterilizing people. As long as the system stops that from happening, I don't care about the paperwork. It's not my concern.

The "ethical" issues with this study do not rise to the level that I care, so the only objection is that they didn't get the IRB to rubber stamp it beforehand, which I also don't care about.