Belfast Project: No lawyers, few historians (and no IRB)

Discussions of the ill-fated Belfast Project at Boston College often frame the issue as what can happen to an oral history project in the absence of IRB oversight. But a recent account of the project in the Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as subsequent discussion, suggests that the real problem was a lack of involvement by lawyers and historians.

[McMurtrie, Beth. “Secrets From Belfast.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 26, 2014.]

PRIM&R Plans SBER Webinar

On February 25, PRIM&R will host a "webinar" entitled "New Solutions to Ongoing Problems When Reviewing Social, Behavioral, and Educational Research." The two faculty are Mary Marshall Clark, who successfully liberated oral history from IRB oversight at Columbia, and J. Michael Oakes, whose chapter in Institutional Review Board: Management and Function more or less claims that questionnaires can drive people to suicide. That's an interesting contrast, though not interesting enough for me to pay $175 to participate.