Newsletter

January 2007

AAUP Questions Scope Of Research Ethics Boards

Research ethics boards were never designed for oversight of journalism programs
or surveys by sociology majors and have gone well beyond their mandates and
purpose, and in the process harming scholarly work, a recent report from the
American Association of University Professors warns.

David Hyman, one of the authors of the report and a professor of law and
medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said ethics boards
(known as Institutional Review Boards or IRBs in the U.S.) serve an important
purpose when people who are the subjects of research can face real harm but that
“what is deeply troublesome is the fact that research on human subjects must
obtain IRB approval whether or not it imposes a serous risk of harm on its
subjects”.

The
report recommends that research methodologies that consist entirely in
collecting data by survey, through interviews, or by observing behavior in
public places be exempt from review by campus IRBs, and that there be no
requirement of IRB approval for the exemption.

It
also recommends that all universities and colleges at which, or under whose
auspices, federally funded research on human subjects is to be conducted provide
assurance they will protect the rights and welfare of the human subjects of all
their research on human subjects, whatever their source of funding.

The
report lists a number of “more or less familiar horror stories” that leave no
ambiguity that the process has gotten out of hand. In one case, a linguist
seeking to study language development in a preliterate tribe was instructed by
the IRB to have the subjects read and sign a consent form before the study could
proceed. In another, a white graduate student was told he could not interview
African-American students on career expectations because the interview might
cause trauma.

Jonathan Knight, director of AAUP’s department of academic freedom, tenure and
governance, said there is no systematic analysis of IRBs to see how commonly
such examples occur but that the stories pop up regularly.

Yet, the report notes there is a danger that the requirement of advance IRB
approval of research will come to be imposed more broadly than it currently is.
And it says that “complaints published here and there over the years have
accomplished little beyond generating an angry and deeply dismaying literature.”

The AAUP report on institutional review boards is available
online at:
www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsrres/academe/2006/SO/Rep/ResearchonHumanSubjects.htm.

CAUT Bulletin, November 2006, p.A5