Are you sure we’re talking about a university ethics committee here?

Seriously, the system you describe is far superior than any university-wide system I have read about. I do encourage you and your colleagues to write up a complete description for circulation to other universities. Among other details, I would like to know:

* What training must various researchers undergo, and who decides what is necessary? (E.g., can oral historians avoid learning about venipuncture? Historians only draw blood when reviewing books.)

* How many members must the committee have, in order to maintain sufficient “color-coded sub-groups [to] do the preliminary and most serious review of applications for which they have special expertise”?

* How did this system come to be, and have you encountered any flak from within the university or government regulators?

I must say, though, that the unusual sophistication and sensitivity of the system you describe undercuts your earlier argument that “to understand that we have less to fear from IRBs than we might expect, we need to better understand their composition and conduct.” I can’t speak for Katz, but I know enough IRB/HREC critics to state that many of us earned our antipathy, as researchers or even as members of ethics committees (see, for example, Christopher Leo’s recent essay, “Does the Ethics Bureaucracy Pose a Threat to Critical Research?”). For such critics, the more we understand IRBs, the less we like them. We have tasted the green eggs and ham, and found them putrid.