IRB approval is not a super high bar if you are not doing something like giving people a research chemical, doing surgeries, or inflicting psychological distres

IRB approval is not a super high bar if you are not doing something like giving people a research chemical, doing surgeries, or inflicting psychological distress. Just make sure the study is aligned with the principles of respect, beneficence, and justice. In terms of grants / funding that is more of an economic issue. How do we allocate limited resources? There is a bit of grantsmanship that comes into play here, but that’s the game. The focus on ROI is in no small part a consequence of the numerous hit pieces crying about stuff like, “They spent X dollars on understanding the mating rituals of honey bees!?! Government waste!!!” But I agree that these decisions about what we as a society want to fund are inherently political. Data access is a little more tricky. I generally take the stance that access is at the pleasure of the data owners / stewards, but they are also bound by the terms of the consent. So there is no small amount of risk that some of the subjects might get mad about how their data is being used and sink the whole ship. And this is probably not a bad thing in my opinion. I take the extreme view that subjects should have more control over their data than they currently have - probably as a reaction against the normalization of surveillance capitalism.