IRB problems
IRB problems
Posted Apr 22, 2021 15:52 UTC (Thu) by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896)In reply to: Intentionally buggy commits for fame—and papers by bpearlmutter
Parent article: Intentionally buggy commits for fame—and papers
I completely disagree. IRBs are (necessarily) bureaucratic, but the rules work well enough in general.
Sure, a particular IRB can misapply the rules governing it, such as the ridiculous examples you list. But the solution is to work with the IRB (or its oversight) to fix them. You need to have people on the IRB who understand the domain, but nothing prevents that either.
I imagine IRBs could be improved, or replaced with something better. But the issue here is that we have researchers that experimented on humans without their consent. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to realize that such experiments are generally *not* acceptable.