> That person died in a car accident and they were wearing a seatbelt! But in any story not about this car accident people generally cast them as the useless.

This story isn't evidence that IRBs are always useless, but also it's not an example of them being useful. The thing this story shows is they are sometimes useless.

That seems like a bad faith reinterpretation of the context that the question was being asked in. The statement that the question pertained to was, "in any story not about this Linux kernel fiasco people generally cast them as the bad guys."

If a lot of money is involved, it's only a matter of time before all oversight is corrupt. Similarly, you can safely assume all data that is on an important (big money) topic is fake.