ourselves a few years before my uni created a central one. Of course, this meant the central ERB was based on the one we had already created, which means it works as we wanted it to work. That in itself is an excellent illustration of my original point.

Indirectly, it is. Because Ethics review exists in the US, an increasing number of publishers started requiring it for publication. Publishers and funders are another external power. Our uni get it had to create one. Interestingly, our department had seen this coming, and we created one >

Actually, empirical research shows not everyone hates them, ours is pretty good (COI as the chair). I just got a proposal auto-approved immediately after submission 3 days ago, little to complain about :)

I am sure we did a better job than the government would have done.

This is actually not true, as psychology has ethical review boards as a consequence of a threat of the US government to intervene, as I discuss here rips-irsp.com/articles/103...

Oh, that is so nice to hear, and thanks for letting me know :)

"If we are unable to educate clinicians then merely persuading them to use CI's rather than p-values is to replace
the unthinking use of one technique with that of another."

A.P.Grieve (1992) Royal Statistical Society News and Notes, 18(7), 3-4.