Thank you all for responding so thoughtfully. I encourage others to reply as well. I would like to use this info (minus any identifying information) to our Dean (who is a Language History scholar with no background in science apparently. She didn't even know what a "poster session" was). Anyway, PLEASE let me know if you do not want your response used (but I really need some "outside ammo" here). I am even more perturbed about this latest problem than usual because of an incident that happened last year. The same IRB committee approved some survey research from a Ph.D. student at Phoenix University (yes, the online diploma mill... oops, did I say that?). The survey was distributed on campus and was about faculty-administrative relations as well as workplace stress (INCLUDING minor physical problems and drug and alcohol use). I completed the survey because I like to help out anyone doing research. I also included additional information about my displeasure with our administration in the space available. I later found out that the survey was being conducted by one of our own administrators (a Vice President getting his degree from Phoenix)!!! He failed to identify himself as an administrator at our institution! Clearly this was a case in which the researcher did not disclose some absolutely essential information. I raised the issue and received a "smackdown" myself. I went so far as to call the folks in the Washington Human Subjects Protection Office (they said they couldn't do anything since the research was not federally funded). Our IRB is obviously out of control at many levels and I am hoping to soon request a wholesale resignation of the committee. Like I don't have better things to do. Argh! Thanks again. -S
======================================================== Steven M. Specht, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology Utica College Utica, NY 13502 (315) 792-3171 "Mice may be called large or small, and so may elephants, and it is quite understandable when someone says it was a large mouse that ran up the trunk of a small elephant" (S. S. Stevens, 1958) ---
