Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 15-Oct-07 7:23 AM >>> I think everyone who is critical of IRBs needs to sit on one. Once you see the horrendous proposals that come through you will begin to see the logic of the necessity to pay some attention to methodology. JC: No Annette. This is an indication that there is something fundamentally wrong with teaching, hiring, and evaluation processes in some academic departments. It is not the job of IRBs to cover up for these inadequacies. Annette: I completely agree with others about the need to examine the methodology, at least for fundamentals. Having sat on our IRB for several years, primarily because I was disgusted with some of their decisions, I quickly was able to reach the conclusion that poor methodology, which clearly results in no gain in knowledge is an abuse of human subjects. JC: I fail to see how flawed studies constitute an abuse of subjects. In many (most? all?) cases I would expect that subjects would not even be aware of the flaws (see below). I think this is an example of how "harm" (i.e., abuse) gets redefined in social science research to include things that it was never intended to include in its original context. The reason this happens, of course, is that there is no danger of any real harm, so "harms" get invented in order to justify the ethics enterprise. Annette: The risk value is NOT zero, it uses up the subject's time and energy that could better be devoted to a more gainful use of time. Therefore there is an investment that is going to be wasted, and will also prevent that person from participating in a more useful study. This is not zero, it is a minus situation for the risk factors. JC: As above, I do not perceive these consequences as harms or risks in any ethics-related sense of the terms. The threshold for "harm" has simply been lowered from what should properly be the concern of IRBs (in disciplines where real harms are possible). Annette: Furthermore, at least at our university, we see participation in research as part of learning about the research process. When students participate in studies that even they can see are poorly designed, they come to distrust the whole research process and its checks and balances. JC: Do you have any evidence about what proportion of subjects participating in flawed studies themselves identified the flaws? Any evidence that it promotes distrust of the research process? One of the criticisms of IRBs is that in fact evidence on most IRB-related issues has never been presented or sought. And cannot students finding flaws in studies (including published ones, of course) be useful for teaching rather than an impediment. Or does pointing out the flaws of published studies in class undermine the research process or instill in students a sense of the complexity of research and competencies to identify weaknesses? Annette: Most universities have a subject pool and if it is depleted by studies that end up in the trash can then not only have you wasted the subjects' time but you have denied good studies from being completed for lack of subjects. JC: Isn't this something for departments to deal with, not IRBs? And wouldn't departments be in a better position to evaluate whether its own studies are methodologically sound and/or the teaching value of weak studies? These are fundamentally not ethical issues that concern the protection of research participants from harm. Annette: Finally, the researcher with the poor study lost the benefit of some constructive feedback, putting in tremendous effort and sometimes years of work into something that ends up in the trashcan. JC: Again, this is not the purpose of IRBs. Faculty mentors, administrators, and perhaps even faculty associations might be concerned about such matters, but by what rational are IRBs suppose to protect researchers from their own idiocy, as opposed to protecting subjects from real harms that exceed those met in daily life? Annette: I have found, on every occasion when a weakness was pointed out in the methods, that the researcher was grateful for the extra set of eyes. And it was NEVER a matter of qualitative versus quantitative studies. JC: That Annette has had such positive experiences probably says more about Annette than about IRBs. And nothing in the criticism of IRBs's intruding into research methodologies prevents researchers from soliciting methodological comments from people qualified to provide such judgments. Annette: It's all in one's attitude and experiences I guess, which is why I advocate for anyone with negative feelings towards IRBs to sit on one. It will be quite eye opening. JC: We should not be basing our decisions about IRBs on our own experiences, but on the collective experiences across the research community, including those of people who have not sat on IRBs. Indeed, it may even be that non-IRB researchers are a better source of objective information given the psychological factors that could influence past and present IRB members (group-think, cognitive dissonance, ...). Take care Jim ---
