It's a common assumption that a review is only truly rigorous if it passes through a full committee — several reviewers, a meeting, a formal vote. A single, well-qualified reviewer working through a genuinely straightforward protocol can produce just as thorough an assessment, often faster, without cutting any real corners. The format isn't what makes a review rigorous; the quality of the scrutiny is.
The problem
Committees get treated as automatically more rigorous, single reviewers as a shortcut — and routing every protocol to committee regardless of its actual complexity doesn't make the process safer, it just makes it slower for everyone, including the studies that would have benefited from a faster, equally rigorous single-reviewer pathway. The opposite mistake matters too: routing a genuinely complex or sensitive protocol to a single reviewer purely because it's quicker risks missing something a second perspective would have caught.
The challenge
The wrong pathway either slows a simple study down or under-scrutinises a complex one — the format isn't what makes review rigorous, the scrutiny is. A single reviewer is well suited to protocols where the risk profile is clear and low and the methodology is standard for the field; a full committee earns its place specifically where reasonable, qualified people might disagree — a vulnerable population, a genuinely novel methodology, a sensitive topic where risk and benefit is a real judgement call rather than an obvious one.
The solution
- Match the review format to genuine complexity, not habit. A clear, written triage step at intake — a short set of criteria applied consistently — decides which pathway a protocol takes.
- A single reviewer can be faster without being weaker, provided they genuinely have the expertise the protocol calls for — matching reviewer expertise to subject matter matters as much here as committee composition does elsewhere.
- Escalate to committee when a study genuinely needs more views — vulnerable populations, novel methodology, and genuinely sensitive topics route to committee; everything else that meets a clear low-risk bar goes to a single qualified reviewer.
It's worth recording briefly why a protocol was routed where it was, especially for borderline cases — this gives a later reviewer or auditor something concrete to assess, and builds a useful record over time. And the triage criteria themselves shouldn't be treated as fixed forever: as a research portfolio changes, they're worth revisiting to check they still draw the line in the right place.
