You really think you can just toss around jargon and people will think you’re smart, don’t you?
No, Institutional Review Boards don’t require more documentation than scientific peer reviewers. I know you meant to insult my work as a final “fuck you”, but having put 7 papers into peer review, and sent two grants to IRB in the past year, let me explain some things to you.
The IRB looks at the legal, ethical, and privacy ramifications of your research. They’re typically involved before the study takes place. They evaluate your (sorry, my) research for any federal or state level laws that might be in play. They also evaluate the ethics of how I will collect data (advertise for participation, compensate for participation) and if the conclusions researched will justify for the potential for harm. They also look at secure and private data storage, and if how I’m storing data is in line with any laws (FERPA, HIPAA) and funder storage guidelines.
In practice, these are mostly lawyers and social scientists. They know the law and ethical component, but I’ve never had one comment on study design or stats. The paperwork isn’t that onerous. Most IRB offices have paperwork templates. They are mostly looking for compliance, not the context of the question in the literature. And that’s about it. They’re there for consulting after the fact, and if I want them to check that something is in compliance, they can help. But in most cases, their involvement usually ends when the proposal being submitted. If the proposal is funded, they’ll usually want to see the funded proposal to make sure the study that is funded doesn’t introduce new compliance violations, and can be consulted if you need to change experimental plans.
Scientific publishers, on the other hand, administer the peer review process. When you submit a scientific article, it goes to an editor. If they deem that the article is in scope, they’ll send it to associate editors, like me. We read the article, confirm that it is within scope and is a reasonable study, and send it to reviewers. At the journal I am an AE at, at the time of submission you must provide: the raw data, processed data, code, and any other metadata to reproduce the experiments. That’s in addition to the paper itself. I’ve never filled out an IRB packet that was as long as even my shortest paper. I’ve never seen an IRB that required you to provide all your code (probably since at the point where your IRB is going through, the code isn’t written). I’ve never met an IRB person who could evaluate code, even if they could get it. The IRB can’t ask for data or results, because they’re the ones clearing you to collect them.
It’s apples to oranges. My work isn’t diminished because it goes through peer review. 90% of my work is pure biology, and simply has no reason to ever see an IRB panel. IRBs aren’t a gold standard of scientific quality, and the vast majority of scientific studies will never go in front of IRB, and that says nothing about their quality or integrity.
