It sounds like this case has a lots of issues. As to the question of the IRB it is not clear whether the specific examples the researcher made to the media came from the research study. It might be unprofessional or ill advised to share with the media specific anecdotes (that come from one's experience as a teacher or advisor) but that has nothing to do with the IRB. If the anecdotes came from the actual study I don't see how she violated confidentiality or that the information would identify a specific student. What the student choses to reveal to others in private to others can't really be taken into account by the researcher. For example, in an article I published http://users.dickinson.edu/~helwegm/PDFVersion/2010.pdf I interviewed 15 Danish and 15 US smokers. In the article I listed specific quotes from each participant (the quotes were the 'data'). Each quote had the gender and age of the participant. If one of my participants had told a friend that she participated in this study the friend might be able to figure out which quotes came from her. But that doesn't mean that I violated the confidentiality of the participant. The informed consent states that their information will never be identified with their name (which it was not).
Marie Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Associate Professor l Department of Psychology Kaufman 168 l Dickinson College Phone 717.245.1562 l Fax 717.245.1971 http://users.dickinson.edu/~helwegm/index.html -----Original Message----- From: Jim Clark [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, January 20, 2014 10:27 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] For your friends who question tenure... Hi The only way these statements could allow identification of individuals out of the 183 students she worked with would be if the students themselves told other people. But that opens a can of worms ... if some student tells others that he got 20% on a test, is my posting the grades without naming the student a violation of privacy? The episode has similarities to Elizabeth Loftus's experiences with an IRB and perhaps again indicates the need to markedly curtail their activities with respect to social science research, as called for I understand in the National Research Council's recent report. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=18614 Take care Jim Jim Clark Professor & Chair of Psychology 204-786-9757 4L41A -----Original Message----- From: MiguelRoig [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, January 20, 2014 8:20 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] For your friends who question tenure... As a member of my institution's IRB, I reacted to the following segment: "Willingham also shared anecdotes about students she’d worked with during her career, such as one who was illiterate, and one who couldn’t read multisyllabic words. Another student asked if Willingham could "teach him to read well enough so he could read about himself in the news,". It seems to me that it might, indeed, be possible to identify those individual students based on the statements Willingham made. If so, that is a problem from an IRB perspective because broadcasting such details about the students could conceivably result in social harm for them. That aside, in addition to the issue of tenure, this case also illustrates the need to be extremely careful with all aspects of the research process when such research has the potential of being controversial and of generating public interest. Miguel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christopher Green" <[email protected]> To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, January 20, 2014 8:44:25 AM Subject: [tips] For your friends who question tenure... For those of you (probably not many on this list) who might have thought that tenure is unnecessary in this "modern" era to protect the integrity of research from the political motivations of a vindictive administration. UNC IRB suddenly reverses its decision AFTER THE FACT on whether research that shows many of its athletes to be functionally illiterate requires oversight. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/20/u-north-carolina-shuts-down-whistle-blower-athletes Sheesh! Chris --- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada [email protected] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ========================= --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=1133043.af3ec43309a63197bc82eb6702801542&n=T&l=tips&o=32912 or send a blank email to leave-32912-1133043.af3ec43309a63197bc82eb6702801...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a891720c9&n=T&l=tips&o=32913 or send a blank email to leave-32913-13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a89172...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13234.b0e864a6eccfc779c8119f5a4468797f&n=T&l=tips&o=32918 or send a blank email to leave-32918-13234.b0e864a6eccfc779c8119f5a44687...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=32922 or send a blank email to leave-32922-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
