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.
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.
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.
It's typically pretty easy to get too -- you can shop around for a sympathetic IRB. In my experience it's been basically a rubber stamp.
Note I work in industry not academia.
Another more recent one: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/Story?id=4741269&pag...
More examples aren't hard to find at all, including the case last year of the gene-edited girls: https://gizmodo.com/chinese-scientist-who-created-crispr-bab...
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board#Exc...
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?
Behavioral research too (which this certainly is). Anything involving humans, pretty much.
If not, the answer is no, though you can read the federal regulations yourself to prove me wrong:
https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=83cd09e1c0...
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.
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.
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.
1) Qualifies as research, and
2) Is directly or indirectly funded by a federal research grant
then yes, it would.
I doubt much performance art qualifies, though.
As the author stated, the goal was to:
> "to study, understand, and expose the reality of grievance studies, which is corrupting academic research"
"study" being the operative word, there.