1. Teixeira misrepresented his research to the IRB, or 2. The IRB is grossly incompetent or unimaginative My experience with IRB's is that they are often extr

1. Teixeira misrepresented his research to the IRB, or 2. The IRB is grossly incompetent or unimaginative My experience with IRB's is that they are often extremely conservative in their interpretations. Legal liability is attached to them. Human-involved research requires an order of magnitude more review to get approved. There are gray areas, and my (very limited) direct observations are that people will try to frame their material to avoid the extra review. I can't rely completely on Princeton's reputation for this, but if I had to guess, Ross either did a poor job presenting to the IRB or deliberately downplayed the nature of the of things.