Purview of institutional review boards increasing

The AAUP is working with disciplinebased associations to develop a report on the issues raised when institutional review boards (IR_Bs) super-vise research in the social sciences and humanities, as they have increasingly been called on to do. The AAUP's partners for this project are the American Anthropological Association, the American Historical Association, the American Political Science Association, the Amerian Sociological Association, the Oral History Association, and the Organization of American Historians.

Campus IRBs, which have long overseen clinical research involving human subjects, draw their authority from Title 45, Part 46, of the Code of Federal Regulations, Protection of Human Subjects (often abbreviated as 45 CFR 46). Their common rules stipulate that research subjects give informed consent, that the well-being of such subjects not be unnecessarily compromised, and that the research in question be worth performing. A driving force behind 45 CFR 46 was concern over serious, life-endangering ethical violations such as the brutal and murderous experiments carried out by Nazi doctors on unwilling subjects during World War II, and the notorious experiment in which a group of doctors in Tuskeegee, Alabama, deliberately withheld syphilis treatments from hundreds of black men in order to observe their symptoms.

By law, research experiments funded by any of seventeen different federal agencies must be preapproved and monitored by IRBs. But because the idea of having different standards for different groups of human subjects is morally untenable at most universities, they typically require that all research involving human subjects, regardless of funding source, go through the IRBs.

No one questions the desirability of overseeing clinical investigations involving humans. But many observers have noted that in recent years IRBs have taken an increased interest in nonclinical work. Researchers in anthropology, sociology, and history, for example, report growing pressure to gain IRB clearance for their projects. The need to do so can be a problem, say some researchers, when IRB members, many of whom specialize in medicine or the hard sciences, don't understand the differences between clinical research methods and those used in the social sciences and the humanities.

"There have been instances in which IRBs have performed a valuable function in overseeing social science research, and I've heard social scientists report that their local IRB strengthened their research or alerted them to important ethical considerations," says AAUP associate secretary Jonathan Knight. "On the other hand, problems arise when IRB procedures are dominated by a biomedical model that does not apply to the social sciences or humanities."

IRBs, for example, require researchers to provide an analysis of the risks and benefits that may accrue to human subjects as a result of a research project. This requirement makes sense when the research involves a doctor's administering an experimental drug, but it seems much less relevant to a historian interviewing someone for a book. IRBs also demand that human subjects be fully informed about an experiment and sign consent forms to that effect. Again, such a requirement is obviously important in clinical trials, but it may be meaningless for an anthropologist observing indigenous peoples in Bolivia's Madidi rainforest or counter-productive for a psychologist conducting experiments in which an element of surprise is essential.

"Current regulations, interpreted narrowly, can have a chilling effect on historians' freedom to pursue difficult topics," writes historian Linda Shopes in the September issue of Perspectives, the newsletter of the American Historical Association. She cites instances of oral historians being asked by IRBs to maintain the anonymity of sources, to destroy tapes of interviews after projects are completed, and to refrain from asking questions about "sensitive" subjects such as an individual's criminal history. Historians may follow such practices on occasion, depending on the topic under study, but as requirements they could hobble much historical research. How far could a series of interviews on Ku Klux Klan activity in the sixties go, for example, without asking sensitive questions?

"When inappropriate criteria are applied to social science research, the result can be delays for researchers because they have to submit additional materials to IRBs," says Knight. "Most research projects are approved, but only about 20 percent are approved on the first go-around. Worse, IRB supervision may lead researchers, including students, to recast their projects in ways that are less intellectually challenging in order to obtain uncontroversial approval."

Copyright American Association of University Professors Nov/Dec 2000
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