IRB approval is a standard requirement for any research done when interacting with human test subjects. The researchers unquestionably didn't apply for IRB approval, and hence they're under scrutiny. No need to dream up conspiracy theories.
Yep. AFAIK you have to get IRB approval to do literally anything with humans involved. Zero discretion is permitted because any amount of discretion degrades trust in the system (and if you thought anti-intellectualism was bad these days, boy do I have a dystopia for you to imagine) and allows unacceptable failures to creep in purely due to human error.
How many times have you submitted a small PR that obviously can't break anything, complaining about the annoyance all the time, only to find out that your "obviously right" PR was in fact badly wrong? How many times have you seen some bit of code and thought "this is weird, but it had to have been approved to get merged, so I probably don't have to worry too much about it"? Now multiply that by research with human subjects.
When you've got a burning question in mind and visions of tremendous benefits for all humanity (or saving some academic fields from themselves) it seems like a good idea to get your ideas reviewed.
Research in the educational setting involving routine educational activities is exempt from most IRB requirements, except for an initial review to confirm that it is the above.
There are exceptions to IRB and while I couldn't necessarily shoehorn this case into any one of them, there is an argument to be made that this counts as a form of "performance evaluation" where obviously no consent could be given beforehand.
It's always struck me as odd that American universities' standards for these things are so much stricter than American businesses' standards.
After all, every A/B test, every gradual rollout of software features, and every measurement of a user's response to an ad is an experiment with a human test subject.
I wonder why the standards imposed on universities are so much more demanding than the standards imposed on businesses?
Universities hold themselves to a higher standard because they operate (or at least want to maintain the pretense of operating) for the benefit of the world, while businesses only care about benefiting their shareholders.
If they're in the journalism department of a university, they'll be required to get consent for all studies on human subjects they do.
For a student project, I once did a user study with a purely informational app. I needed to get approval and have each participant sign a form that I had adequately informed them about the possible dangers of the experiment (none) and that their data would remain confidential and so on.
The effort seems ridiculous when it's obvious that there's no danger, but the whole point of having a review process is to make sure that someone checks.
Boghossian is an employee of Portland State, an institution which almost certainly receives grant funding from the federal government for research. Some minute portion of his salary/office/supplies/etc. are paid for by said federal research grant money.
Regardless, the regulations apply to the entire institution and therefore any faculty members of said institution.
Was this research, though? Or was this goofing around? Was their goal to publish a paper about what they'd done? If so, it's research. But if not, this is not research. Academics aren't required to get board approval for every human interaction they have.
By this logic performance art done in view of humans should be subject to IRB review — it is, after all, trying to provoke and observe a reaction in a group of humans.
If people get tickets to see your art they aren't really being experimented on.
If you want to, say, explode a simulated bomb in a TSA screening area to call attention to the waste of lives inherent in the checkpoints...yes, you'd need an IRB sign off, but probably that would be the least of your problems.
