IRBs Impeded Harvard Dissertation on Addiction and Incarceration

Kimberly Sue, a medical anthropologist in Harvard's MD/PhD program, reports that IRB review can seem "a hassle, a nuisance or a stumbling block, as we seek to enact a more relevant and engaged era of anthropology."

[Kimberly Sue "Are IRBs a Stumbling Block for an Engaged Anthropology?" Somatosphere, 9 August 2012, http://somatosphere.net/2012/08/are-irbs-a-stumbling-block-for-an-engaged-anthropology.html . h/t Michelle Meyer]

Elliott Decries IRB Opacity

Writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education's Brainstorm Blog, Carl Elliott argues that the "by any reasonable estimate [the IRB] oversight system has been a failure . . . yet so many people are professionally invested in the current oversight system that they cannot imagine replacing it, only tinkering with it." He particularly condemns the secrecy of the system.

[Carl Elliott, “When Medical Muckraking Fails” Chronicle of Higher Education, Brainstorm, August 2, 2012.]

Geographer: Unnecessary IRB Delay Threatens NSF Grants

In the fifth and final Professional Geographer essay, Scott M. Freundschuh, Professor of Geography at the University of New Mexico, notes that many IRBs "unnecessarily require research protocols to be reviewed by the full IRB, therefore impeding the progress of research projects." Rather than suggesting structural changes to the IRB system, he counsels geographers to work within existing rules.

[Scott M. Freundschuh, "Institutional Review for Research in the Social Sciences from the Federal Perspective," Professional Geographer 64, no. 1 (2012): 43-48, DOI:10.1080/00330124.2011.596791]

IRB Chair Denies Being a Vampire

Patricia Price, a geographer and IRB chair at Florida International University, assures us that her board is not "a malevolent, vampirish entity."

[Patricia L. Price, "Geography, Me, and the IRB: From Roadblock to Resource," Professional Geographer 64, no. 1 (2012): 34-42, DOI:10.1080/00330124.2011.596789]

Can Macalester's Divisional Review Work Elsewhere?

In his contribution to the Professional Geographer special issue, Dan Trudeau of Macalester College writes that "IRBs can be a pedagogical asset, particularly if institutional review practices cultivate the habits of mind and strategies necessary for engaged and reflexive research." The key, his article suggests, may be the devolution of review to specialized committees rather than the general-purpose IRBs that are the norm. But Trudeau does not stress the degree to which Macalester's sucess depends on its departure from federal standards.

[Dan Trudeau, "IRBs as Asset for Ethics Education in Geography," Professional Geographer 64, no. 1 (2012): 25-33, DOI: 10.1080/00330124.2011.596786.]

Common Rule Is "Out of Place" on the Streets of Bogotá

In the second article in the Professional Geographer special issue, Amy Ritterbusch argues that "when lives are at risk, socially and politically responsible action in the field becomes the driving force of human subjects protection," but that "standard human subjects protection procedures often pull initial field relations in the opposite direction, establishing distance and difference between the researcher and research population through a temporally and spatially restrictive web of institutional categorizations and paperwork that predefine participants’ identities and role in the research project."

She finds that "Although well intentioned, 45 CFR 46 is a bureaucratic discourse that positions youth in problematic ways and is out of place in the world of Bogotana street girls."

[Amy Ritterbusch, “Bridging Guidelines and Practice: Toward a Grounded Care Ethics in Youth Participatory Action Research,” Professional Geographer 64, no. 1 (2012): 16–24, DOI: 10.1080/00330124.2011.596783.]

IRB Sought to Monitor Interviews with Elected Officials

The first article in the Professional Geographer special issue argues that the IRB system assumes that the researcher is a "powerful, knowing agent who assembles a scientific methodology that is always of potential harm to the researched," while subjects are always "less knowing" and vulnerable. As a result, scholars "face the presumption of guilt while seeking to prove innocence in the IRB process of application, negotiation, and usually, but not painlessly, final approval to conduct research."

[Deborah G. Martin and Joshua Inwood. “Subjectivity, Power, and the IRB,” Professional Geographer 64, no. 1 (2012): 7–15, DOI:10.1080/00330124.2011.596781.]

IRB Chair: "Human Subjects Oversight Is Here to Stay"

Back in September 2011, I noted that the Professional Geographer had posted a focus section on IRBs (it appeared in print in February 2012). At the time I was too busy reading and writing ANPRM responses to comment on the six items in the focus section, but with the luxury of summer I can now do so. Today, I start with the introduction.

Ironically, given its appearance at that moment of regulatory upheaval, the introduction to the focus section dismisses the possibility of regulatory reform.

[Patricia L. Price, "Introduction: Protecting Human Subjects Across the Geographic Research Process," Professional Geographer 64:1 (2012), 1-6, DOI: 10.1080/00330124.2011.596780.]

SAGE Insight Posts "The Case Against Ethics Review"

My Research Ethics article, "The Case Against Ethics Review in the Social Sciences," has been posted on the SAGE Insight blog. This means you can read it free. Thanks, SAGE!

First Circuit Rejects Belfast Project Historians' Appeal

On Friday, July 6, the First Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the effort by two oral historians to block the release of interviews of participants in Northern Ireland's Troubles, archived as the Belfast Project at Boston College's Burns Library.

Citing precedent, especially Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), the court majority found that "the choice to investigate criminal activity belongs to the government and is not subject to veto by academic researchers."

[In re Request from United Kingdom, Nos. 11-2511, 12-1159, --- F.3d ----, 2012 WL 2628046 (1st Cir. July 06, 2012)]

In a concurrence, Judge Juan Torruella is more sympathetic to the researchers, arguing that academic researchers are entitled to "a degree of protection" and possess "a cognizable interest under the First Amendment." However, he continues, "any such interest has been weighed and measured by the Supreme Court and found insufficient to overcome the government's paramount concerns in the present context."