Information posted on messageboards... truly public domain?

[OrganisM]

A while ago my stepfather who's a professor at UNLV and is also part of the IRB brought up an interesting thought. The IRB deals with the ethics of experiments/collection of data on human subjects.

So out of curiosity, what do you guys think, do you think what is posted here is for the members of our community only, and private information, or would it not bother you at all if any and all of your statements were used as data for research?

I personally think that even though forums are technically public, when one posts something it's at least primarily meant only for the other members of the community.