Comment by karaterobot
4 years ago
In my admittedly limited interaction with human subjects research approval, I would guess that this would not have been considered a proper setup. For one thing, there was no informed consent from any of the test subjects.
The piss-weak IRB decided that no such thing was necessary, hence no consent was requested. It's impossible not to get cynical about these review boards, their only purpose seems to be to deflect liability.