- Citation
McGee, Sharon J.. Practicing Socially Progressive Research: Implications for Research and Practice. p. 143
- Summary
McGee lays out the origin of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) that have their history steeped in blood starting after World War II in the shadow of the Nuremburg Trials, and they follow what are known as the Nuremburg Code. These guides of ethics are a key to making sure that participants in studies are voluntary and human beings are protected and afforded their rights. That said, McGee also points out that the US has failed to adhere to these principles in the Tuskegee Study, where the effects of syphilis were studied in black men without informing the people involved, and the Willowbrook Hepatitis Study where low income children were used as lab rats to see what treatments worked best for hepatitis.
Despite the very real need for ethics evaluation studies, McGee presents several anecdotal academic complaints regarding the difficulty in preparing a study to meet IRB standards. The concern is that some IRBs take too much initiative in examining a study and end up changing it so it does not cover what the researcher originally wanted to examine. McGee is careful to point out that not much research into whether or not this is true beyond general hearsay has been done. The other concern is the standard that softer studies, like some conducted in the humanities, are just as stringent as medical studies, which can result in real physical harm. The general complaint McGee examines is that the worry for emotional wellbeing that IRBs focus on is an overstated concern.
In the end, McGee does not present any suggestions for IRBs to change their procedures. Rather, she gives several suggestions to researchers to see IRBs not as an adversary but as a partner and sounding board to creating the best possible research to meet their goals. The onus falls more strongly in the camp of the researchers to present something that meets with IRB standards and to work with them to create a project that functions.
- Quote Bank
“IRBs were created in response to several events that raised questions about the ethical conduct of researches, the appropriateness of the methodology used to collect data, and the risks to human participants.” (144)
“In the United States, two research endeavors, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the Willowbrook Hepatitis Study, brought research ethics to the fore.” (144)
“Charged with protecting human participants, IRBs play an important role in research in that they must approve all research conducted at a university that involves human beings. Thus, IRBs hold similar core beliefs as socially progressive research—to protect the welfare of the disenfranchised, marginalized, and underrepresented.” (145)
“That the training is time-consuming and contains some unrelated material does not mean that it is not worthwhile.” (146)
“The IRB insisted on language in the calls for proposals (CFPs) that indicated risks to participants…which Doughtery and Kramer felt ultimately affected how the CFP was perceived by potential contributors, how the articles were written, and possibly how the issue was analyzed by its readers.” (147)
“[Gunsalus et al.] suggest that, in fact, academic freedom is at risk when IRBs exert their influence over projects… ‘The literature is replete with anecdotal examples of work scaled back or never attempted because IRB reviews are too burdensome or unresponsive.’” (148)
“As IRBs review research protocols, they often are asking the researches involved to change the way in which their research is being conducted or the data that they will be collecting.” (149)
“White argues that often IRB members are not necessarily trained in ‘risk assessment,’ particularly regarding nonmedical research.” (150)
“They further speculate that the IRB’s anxiety about the proposed study may have ‘reflected deeply embedded assumptions about race/ethnicity and class behaviors in addition to insurance or litigation risks associated with working in poor neighborhoods. Class and intellectual culture may influence moral analysis more than many academics assume or want to acknowledge.’” (151)
“The narrator always retains enormous power: the power to refuse to be interviewed.” (153)
“We must not be intimidated by IRBs nor should we try to circumvent them.” (153)
“Researchers could benefit by viewing IRBs not as adversaries but as co-participants for a change.” (154)
- Reflection
I am so glad that at the end of this McGee points out that researchers should be compliant with IRB requirements. When such great abuses have happened so recently are followed by tone-deaf complaints that a review board is concerned when it appears a low income or marginalized group is being might be taken advantage of, I wonder about the gap between a researcher and the researched. It felt difficult to take the academic complaints about the strictures of IRBs seriously when the starting point for these boards is the Holocaust.
In the interest of recognizing a participant’s humanity, McGee’s discussion of working hand in hand with a research participant to blur the boundaries in research seems like a reasonable step, especially in education where student/teacher relationships seem to benefit from being close. I am curious what the implications of this new type of research is, and what already established rules it’s pushing. Research in the humanities feels like an ill-defined field, and I think of Chris Loar talking about the essays he’s written following Robinson Crusoe and how no one will read them, which begs the question if it counts as worthwhile research. I don’t have a good answer for that.
The reframing of IRBs as a partner in working with research makes sense, and, as a neophyte to the world of research, I’m a little surprised that this article needed to be written. I imagine there are parts of IRBs that are not currently as straightforward or streamlined as they could be, but I somehow doubt that the pressure for them to be more streamlined and less regulated will ever let up, so it seems reasonable that energy put into maintaining an IRB is energy well spent.