I Review Stark, Behind Closed Doors

The American Journal of Sociology has published my review of Laura Stark's Behind Closed Doors. I describe it as an "illuminating account of how ethics review really works," but note that "Stark’s reluctance to condemn [IRB] behavior sets her apart from other observers of IRBs in action" and that it is "a stretch for Stark to claim that today’s IRBs use 'a decision-making model that stabilized in the 1950s and 1960s.'"

[Zachary M. Schrag, Review of Behind Closed Doors: IRBs and the Making of Ethical Research by Laura Stark. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. Viii+229. $85.00 (cloth); $27.50 (paper).” American Journal of Sociology 118, no. 2 (September 2012): 494–496. www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/664671]

For my comments on Stark's dissertation, on which the book is based, see "How IRBs Decide--Badly: A Comment on Laura Stark's 'Morality in Science.'"