The IRB as Research Subject

Excerpt

The arsenal of research articles that stock professional and popular journals must first make their way through several gates before publication. The most prominent yet secretive threshold is consideration by the institutional review board (IRB) of the scientific and ethical merits of the research study. Despite limited access to the decisional process undertaken by IRBs, investigators submitting their proposals for review, and research participants impacted by them have no access to the deliberations taking place and weighing of the fates involved. This veil has been now been pierced by a book describing the diverse forms of personal reasoning and interpersonal deliberation used by review board chairs, members, and administrators, and the responsibilities they hold to scientific investigators and the public. Dr. Robert Klitzman’s book The Ethics Police? The Struggle to Make Human Research Safe (Oxford University Press, 2015) is his eighth to date and is especially apropos given his cumulative experience as a Professor of Psychiatry with Columbia University and Director of its Masters of Bioethics Program. …