IRB Asked, USB or FireWire. Silly, but Is It Bullying?

Caleb Carr, assistant professor of communication at Illinois State University, argues that abusive IRBs are best thought of as bullies.

Though IRBs are a legally required element of many higher education institutions and an important ethical part of all, their overextension of unchecked power is creating a hostile work environment for many social scientists, and calling them for what they are – systemic bullies – can empower administrators and faculties to finally respond to the increasing calls for IRB reform.

[Carr, Caleb T. “Spotlight on Ethics: Institutional Review Boards as Systemic Bullies.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 37 (2015): 1–16. doi:10.1080/1360080X.2014.991530.]

Computer Scientist: Informed Consent is the Wrong Metaphor

Michael Bernstein, assistant professor of computer science at Stanford and a former postdoctoral scholar on Facebook’s Data Science team, argues that "Hammering ethical protocols designed for laboratory studies onto internet experimentation is fundamentally misguided."

[Bernstein, Michael. “The Destructive Silence of Social Computing Researchers.” Medium, July 7, 2014. https://medium.com/@msbernst/9155cdff659.]