I think there are two things at work. First, if you pay someone to find problems with a study, they're going to want to find problems with the study to justify

I think there are two things at work. First, if you pay someone to find problems with a study, they're going to want to find problems with the study to justify their existence. Associated with that is that many people don't consider the level of risk when they are considering whether something is or is not a problem. And both things don't just apply to IRBs. A friend told me about when his workplace had a security assessment (for Reasons). the assessor's only finding: that a houseplant by the door had sharp leaves and could be used by a malicious intruder as a weapon. Yes, I suppose so. Job done by security assesso. But, just perhaps, a malicious intruder might not choose to rely on being able to slash someone with the houseplant, in which case worse things might possibly happen.