I don't know exactly what this student was doing. Was it a survey?

Whether the student is bound by IRB guidelines or not kind of depends where she was up to with her studies / what she was trying to do with her studies.

For example, undergraduates often do informal surveys off their own bat. They often don't realise that there are IRB guidelines that apply. I figure that you can take that to be the case when someone does a survey under the rubric of anonymity and where they do not disclose their institution. Sometimes (regretably) they ask a lecturer whether they can do this and the lecturer says that yeah, sure they can. Part of it is about the lecturer assuming that the IRB will rule that the survey does not constitute research. How come it doesn't constitute research? The person would never get a peer reviewed publication out of it because the appropriate research protocol isn't being followed and (because you can bet) that they would have failed to adequately control for ordering effects, agreement bias and so forth. It is much harder to design a good survey than it looks...

> They would never approve research in which the people taking part (for example, members of Psych Central) did not sign an Informed Consent Form, which details the purpose and procedures of the study, and lists the potential harms and benefits.

That is a little controversial. Dr Bob said that his boards didn't constitute research even though he had stated that posters should realise that in posting they were giving him permission to quote from their posts in research articles and seminars. I told him that 'only the IRB has the power to decide whether it constitutes research or not' so he put in a proposal to the IRB and they determined 'the boards do not constitute research at this time'. As such, he doesn't need to request that posters give him informed consent - but he does.

Er... If the poster said that they wanted people to respond for research purposes then... Can't one simply decide not to respond if one doesn't want to be in the research? I don't really understand the problem (unless it is about 'researchers' who research anonymously without disclosing their university affiliation and without IRB approval).

> Does anyone have the link to the original post made by the researcher?

I'd like to see it too. My guess is that it would have been 'moved' (which is psychcentral speak for deleted).