IRBs have a problem. Can North Star’s nonprofit model save it?

When Stephen Rosenfeld and Patricia Seymour founded the not-for-profit North Star Review Board, they’d become disillusioned with the scientific oversight system in America. IRBs, or institutional review boards, are supposed to have one priority top of mind: the rights and welfare of human research participants. But after decades as research ethicists, Rosenfeld and Seymour thought the industry had lost its way. The problem, they said, isn’t just theoretical. Over the last couple of decades, IRB scandals have cast a spotlight on a fundamental problem in the system, experts said.