To avoid confusion with researchers in the future, I've made some minor changes to the research related pages on Meta (see below). This should help ensure that outdated documentation does not cause unnecessarily delay and/or expense for those interested in doing Wikimedia-related research.
1: Posted a notice to the top of https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Subject_recruitment to the effect that RCOM no longer evaluates research projects or participates in recruiting participants, and removed the assertion that research requires approval from RCOM.
2: Updated https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:FAQ to make it clear that the WMF / RCOM does not evaluate specific research proposals or assist in recruiting, and that any researcher intending to conduct on-wiki interaction should seek approval from the local projects using whatever methods have been established locally.
3: Removed the reference to RCOM approval from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Projects