An exposé of lax publishing standards is not research misconduct

I agree to an extent, although I think that the author of this piece omits or trivialises two key issues. The first is that there are ethical questions that a review board could and should engage with: namely whether the journals should have been named (in my view they should), and whether the Pieces should have been withdrawn before publication (again ‘yes’ in my view, and this was not done). Non-consensual research is only justifiable with the minimum of intrusion, and this was not the case here, seemingly in order to humiliate the subjects. These are serious matters. Secondly, the author trivialises the fact that Boghossian decided that he - rather than a review board - should decide on the ethical validity of his research. I agree to an extent that in this case the research will have been justified, but the author of this piece is guilty of retrofitting his justification: he agrees with the research so sees little harm in the researcher deciding that he should conduct his own ethical review. Yet the quality (or lack of it) of the study does not lessen the seriousness of Boghossian’s decision to neglect to do something that a federal law states that he must - this leaving his institution open to potential sanctions including loss of funding. Even if I agree with his research - and I do to an extent - Boghossian has made a large, not small, error and must face the consequences.

It’s a shame that there is no edit function here - bloody typos ...

Would like to raise an important issue: an IRB approval and a signed informed consent do not make an unethical study ethical. Let's move beyond IRBs. Most IRB members do not know what they're doing.