A Justice Site
A Justice Site
About Us - Site Map: Where to Find Stuff - NEW on Site
MIRROR SITES: CSUDH - Habermas - UWP
EDITORIAL NEWS: jeanne's World - Susan's World - Pat's World
jeanne's World Index
jeanne's World as We Start to Gather Stories
RESOURCES: Community Building - Visual Sociology - Message Building
POST on YAHOO GROUP: Dear Habermas Discussion Group - Write Free
SEARCH: - Site Index - Topics Index - FAQS on Navigating Site
FACULTY ASSISTANCE: Letters of Recommendation - Susan - jeanne
UWP Criminal Justice Dept. - CSUDH Dept. of Sociology
| Merriam-Webster Dictionary Search: |
California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: February 28, 2007
Latest Update: February 28, 2007
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu
February 28, 2007.
Picked up the New York Times this morning and couldn't ignore the article in the bootom-left corner of the front page by Patricia Cohen: As Ethics Panels Expand Grip, No Field Is Off Limits, NY Times, February 28, 2007, at p. A1, consulted February 28, 2007.
"Ever since the gross mistreatment of poor black men in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study came to light three decades ago, the federal government has required ethics panels to protect people from being used as human lab rats in biomedical studies. Yet now, faculty and graduate students across the country increasingly complain that these panels have spun out of control, curtailing academic freedom and interfering with research in history, English and other subjects that poses virtually no danger to anyone. "The panels, known as Institutional Review Boards, are required at all institutions that receive research money from any one of 17 federal agencies and are charged with signing off in advance on almost all studies that involve a living person, whether a former president of the United States or your own grandmother. This results, critics say, in unnecessary and sometimes absurd demands."And I thought I was alone in wondering has this inanity could happen. But it seems to be happening all over, whether it makes sense or not:
"Ever since the gross mistreatment of poor black men in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study came to light three decades ago, the federal government has required ethics panels to protect people from being used as human lab rats in biomedical studies. Yet now, faculty and graduate students across the country increasingly complain that these panels have spun out of control, curtailing academic freedom and interfering with research in history, English and other subjects that poses virtually no danger to anyone."The panels, known as Institutional Review Boards, are required at all institutions that receive research money from any one of 17 federal agencies and are charged with signing off in advance on almost all studies that involve a living person, whether a former president of the United States or your own grandmother. This results, critics say, in unnecessary and sometimes absurd demands."
Look at some of the examples Patricia Cohen gives:
"Among the incidents cited in recent report by the American Association of University Professors are
- "a review board asking a linguist studying a preliterate tribe to “have the subjects read and sign a consent form,”
- ". . . a board forbidding a white student studying ethnicity to interview African-American Ph.D. students “because it might be traumatic for them.”
- . . .
- "One student currently waiting for a board to approve his study of a strike in the 1970s, Mr. Freeman said, had to submit a list of questions he was going to ask workers and union officials, file signed consent forms, describe the locked location where he would keep all his notes, take a test to certify he understood the standards." ["and make sure his faculty supervisor was also tested and certified." from printed version, not on Web]
. . .
"But to many faculty and graduate students, review boards are like a blister that gets worse with every step. Those outside of the hard sciences say the legitimate concerns over ethics and safety are largely irrelevant to most of their research.
"According to a stack of reports, symposiums and studies by academic associations and scholars, the system’s “mission creep” is having a pernicious and widespread effect on humanities and social science research. Legal scholars also argue the boards violate the First Amendment."
This reminds me of Weber's caution that bureaucracy could lead us into an "iron cage."
References:
- As Ethics Panels Expand Grip, No Field Is Off Limits, NY Times, February 28, 2007, at p. A1, consulted February 28, 2007.
- Weber on Bureaucracy From Larry W. Widener's of the Dead Sociologist's Site at Pfeiffer University.
