Since ethics committees’ main tool is prior review of applications, showing the utility of such review may be crucial to winning researchers’ respect. Thus, I look forward to reading about “the things that [you] find repeatedly cropping up as problems on anthropologists’ applications,” and your thoughts about why ethics-committee review–rather than better training, a researcher’s affidavit, or departmental review–is the best tool to avoid those problems.

Best,

Zach

While I very much appreciate Dr. Schrag’s continuing work on the history and processes of IRBs, I don’t think he got my original piece 100% correct. I certainly did not consider myself attempting to ‘refute’ Katz’s journal article with a short post on a blog; would that my writing were so effective (and it’s not even close). Nor did I even focus on Katz’s central issue: pre-approval of ‘research’ that happens unexpectedly, such as social science insights that arise without expectation or preparation (Katz’s own work on crying, for example, draws on events he has witnessed in his own life when he was intending to do research). Most of these events, of course, would not need approval; one does not need IRB approval to live and move in public.

But that’s just NOT my point. Perhaps I did not make it clearly enough. My point is that among many anthropologists — and I say this primarily from my experinece over the last two decades or so rather than from anything Katz wrote — see ‘ethics approval’ as a bureacratic hoop, a process to be avoided as much as possible. Given the way things work in many universities, this is probably a sane, appropriate, and optimistic (overly optimistic) response. But I am suggesting that one other response is to better understand and then even work to change IRBs so that they help anthropologists to enforce some sort of ethical standards in our field.

I’ll write more soon about the things that I find repeatedly cropping up as problems on anthropologists’ applications and how we might better anticipate certain obvious problems, but I’ll point out that I try to practice what I preach — I serve on our university’s ethics review board and try to make the process work better for us in spite of the fact that it’s a personal sacrifice (like any university committee that one might serve on without gaining much material benefit). I actually think it’s a fascinating committee to serve on. I’m much better aware of the research happening all over campus, and I feel like I’ve learned quite a bit about research design from some outstanding applications. One colleague suggested to me once — perhaps without knowing that I was on an ethics board (or perhaps BECAUSE she knew I was on an ethics board) — that she thought people served on these things out of a desire for power. Although I haven’t done the requisite self-psychoanalysis to truly know myself on this issue, I certainly don’t feel powerful; but I do feel a hell of a lot better informed. And I know that I strive in my comments and suggestions on applications to balance the need for enforcing ethical standards with the need for research to occur in a timely, sensible, and not overly difficult manner. For example, i frequently suggest that ethnographers strike from their applications onerous promises of returning results to informants in the field, suggesting less expensive and elaborate mechanisms to achieve these worthwhile goals.

From reading his blog, I know that Dr. Schrag is much more constructive in many of his posts. I’m not sure why he singled me out on his blog for derision, but I regret that my primary point may not have come through more clearly. My point here is quite simple: turn an ethnographer’s eye on the ethics committee, and maybe even engage in some participant observation on a committee, rather than just rage as a field against the ‘injustice’ and then seek to avoid the process.

Posted by Greg Downey

* Emerson and Pollner’s study of psychiatric emergency temas.

* Charles Bosk’s study of genetic counselors .

* John Irwin’s study of felons .

* Elijah Anderson’s work on race relations .

* Katz’s own work on crying.

(Full citations for each work are included in Katz’s essay.)

In each case, Katz argues, prior review by an IRB would have been impossible or irrelevant, because the research was based on observations made long in the past, in situations that arose unexpectedly, or concerning topics that only emerged on the course of the research. I would like to know how you think an enlightened IRB would have handled any of these projects and, in particular, if you think “preauthorization for observations and interviews” would have been an appropriate requirement.

A couple of things you might be interested in going on in the Blogosphere:
1. Over at Institutional Review Blog I’m having a discussion about the review of history with the IRB’s author Zachary M. Schrag. The particular discussion is whether more general ethics review ought to be preferred to departmental review
2. Over at the group blog I run, Philosophy and Bioethics, I have just posted an entry about the present system of ethics review in the UK: Research Ethics in the UK: The present “system”

Cheers
David Hunter,
Lecturer in Bioethics
University of Ulster
Northern Ireland