Thursday, March 31, 2016

IRB Manager Laments “Unhappy Marriage” with Ethnography

Writing for Contexts, Abigail Cameron, an IRB manager for the Texas State Department of Health Services, laments that “IRBs and ethnographers often ‘talk past each other’ resulting in confusion, delays, and frustration—i.e., a very unhappy marriage.” She rightly blames faulty federal regulations as the prime cause of this unhappiness, yet she downplays IRB misbehavior as a contributing factor.


[Abigail E. Cameron, “The Unhappy Marriage of IRBs and Ethnography,” Contexts, accessed March 24, 2016, h/t Rob Townsend.]

Monday, March 21, 2016

First, Do Some Harm, Part IV: Fake Submission to Fake Conference Yields Fake Charge of Misconduct

Professor Jim Vander Putten, who spent six years as chair of the University of Arkansas Little Rock (UALR) IRB, is now charged with violating university rules by conducting research without that board’s approval. The case highlights several problems with the current system, most notably its failure to provide standards for studies designed to expose misbehavior.


[Peter Schmidt, “A Scholar’s Sting of Education Conferences Stirs a Hornet’s Nest,” Chronicle of Higher Education, March 14, 2016, paywalled.]

Saturday, March 19, 2016

New Book: The Ethics Rupture

The University of Toronto Press has published The Ethics Rupture: Exploring Alternatives to Formal Research-Ethics Review, edited by Will C. van den Hoonaard and Ann Hamilton. My chapter is entitled, “Ethical Pluralism: Scholarly Societies and the Regulation of Research Ethics.”