It could lead to "IRB laundering," where academic researchers evade formal ethics-review processes by collaborating with corporate researchers who do experiments and collect data within a company where ethics review processes are looser.

But university IRB approval wasn’t necessary, because Facebook didn’t receive federal funds, and the academics (who are responsible to their universities) didn’t participate in the collection and analysis of data that failed to meet human subjects treatment standards. The study, to use an apt phrase, engaged in IRB laundering.

Today we learned that IRB laundering is a thing.