The majority of industries which involve the potential to cause harm operate with comparable licensing and oversight systems. Food manufacturing, aerospace engineering, civil engineering, factories with dangerous equipment like smelters or refineries, all of these strictly require licensed professionals to do design work, that plans be approved by various oversight bodies before operation commences, and in some cases that those oversight bodies conduct regular inspections. We mandate this oversight because, without it, people do horrible things and get away with it. They hide their crimes too well, they have pockets deep enough to win any court case, or they foist the blame off on someone else. So we prevent harm instead of trusting people and corporations to be good when we know they won't be. https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/timel...

> all of these strictly require licensed professionals to do design work

Sure, but it's not clear that the licensure itself reduces accidents or abuse. Plenty of licensed electricians (at least here in Ontario) are deadly incompetent. I've heard at least two accounts of electricians assuring builders or homeowners that a circuit is disconnected, and those people having an unwelcome surprise when they go to cut/remove said circuit.

All of these things come with a cost as well as a benefit.

It is possible to deal with crime through an 'oversight system', this is called a surveillance state.

As I indicated, I'm uncommitted on which way is best for the case under discussion. For criminal matters, and for hairdressing, I prefer presumption of innocence; for aerospace engineering, licensure and oversight.

I think it is a justifiable approach and might be a better one. We chose IRBs after appalling cases like the Tuskegee Airmen experiment; perhaps we should have hanged the perpetrators instead.

Perhaps not. Having never been an academic, I am aware this subject invokes strong feelings, while having none myself.

The Tuskgee syphilis experiment resulted also in informed consent laws in clinical trials; which I would argue would have a better effect than trying to get a board within the institution which carried out this experiment to apply an ethical standard to the study.

Only criminal law and there's no reason to think that standard should be applied in all situations beyond criminal law. The criminal standard is so high because the consequence of guilt is so high (including incarceration or even death) and because it's applied by the State.

Should the consequences of harming test subjects be any lower?

I can make a solid case for a less oppressive IRB regime and criminal sanctions for those who harm their test subjects.

Prior restraint in the form of requiring approval by an IRB is better than harsher punishment. The point is to prevent any research from getting to the point of criminal charges.

A researcher operating under "better to ask forgiveness than permission" is in serious mad scientist, Frankenstein territory.