> For medical research, sure.

Behavioral research too (which this certainly is). Anything involving humans, pretty much.

What about journalists? Should they go through IRB approval before publishing a story?

If they're in the journalism department of a university, they'll be required to get consent for all studies on human subjects they do.

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.

Are they performing research that receives support, directly or indirectly, from the United States federal government?

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...

The "grievance studies" papers were sponsored by the federal government?

Indirectly? Yes.

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.

That's been proposed. What's the point of this question?

Was this research, though? Or was this goofing around? Was their goal to publish a paper about what they'd done? If so, it's research. But if not, this is not research. Academics aren't required to get board approval for every human interaction they have.

From my other comment:

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.

By this logic performance art done in view of humans should be subject to IRB review — it is, after all, trying to provoke and observe a reaction in a group of humans.

If people get tickets to see your art they aren't really being experimented on.

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.

If the performance art:

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.