For the academics among the bloodless readership, IRB is a neither new nor pleasant part of the academic research regimen. For the non-academics among you, the common exposure is usually hearing about double-blind medical studies, and preventing harm done to sick people or lies being told by pawns of the tobacco industry. There is a legitimate need to protect people involved in studies (Milgram, anyone?) even those that do not pose physical harm. The heinous acts (among others) that ultimately led to the establishment of the protocols were truly horrific.
All that being said, the IRB procedures and "training" conducted institutions often reek more of CYA than anything else. As I was renewing my certification to conduct human subjects research (survey questions count, people, but too bad we can't have telemarketers brought up on charges!) via an online service to which our institution subscribes, there was a module on the necessity of institutional review as well as the history of the practice. I'm not sure if they hired a CNN headline writer to do the mouseover text on their pictures or what, but one of the illustrations of the text was a painting of Gallileo. The mouseover text?
Gallileo had his work reviewed by the ethics board of his day. Here Gallileo is pictured before Cardinal Bellarmino and the Roman Inquisition in 1632.
I'm not sure whether to take that as a threat, a signal that they think they are funny enough to joke with the test takers who feel like they are in front of Bellarmino, or as a sign that they have some actual insight into the constraining effect that the IRB procedures can have on people's research.
Posted by binky at August 14, 2008 07:25 PM | TrackBack | Posted to The Academy