[lliwta]

> Well, a committee of scientists that know better than you think results will be worthwhile and disagree.

The article stressed that green lighting the research was a hugely controversial decision. I'm also pretty certain there are a huge number of scientists who do research on animals are wouldn't be comfortable with this research.

Also, I think the parent was rejecting the deontological framework in which the decision was made, rather than calling into question the resulting calculation by the ethics board. So an appeal to the expertise of the panel doesn't make much sense.

[nospecinterests]

So what if it was controversial? Some decisions are controversial. This one received more discussion, input, and thought than most other plans. Just because it did it doesn't make that decisions wrong or unethical.

[nmrm]

Another committee of scientists -- another IRB board -- probably would have not allowed the study.

Therefore, the parent's appeal to the IRB process as the harbinger of ethics is misguided.

If any IRB would deem a study ethical, then there's probably consensus among the scientific community on the cost-benefit tradeoff of the study. If one IRB deemed the study ethical, and if there're probably a lot of other potential IRBs that would not, then appealing to some sort of scientific consensus on the matter is a misnomer.