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Much of this reminds me of what I have been going through. What SSC should have investigated and wrote up is that hospital and medical IRB is fraught with burea

Much of this reminds me of what I have been going through. What SSC should have investigated and wrote up is that hospital and medical IRB is fraught with bureaucracy and that a private IRB industry has developed, entities inside that handle wide ranges of studies and turn around informed consent docs and things very fast (within a week). Our first IC forms got banged multiple times for the same reasons his did. And it’s annoying as shit. But my ethical training focused not on something stupid like Nazis, but something real like American scientists unethically hiding treatment from diseases they were studying, like the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (the actual reason IRB exists as is). Or the Milgram Experiment. Etc. A lot of IRB review is stupid. But messing with human subjects doesn’t have a good track record in this country. Our predecessors earned every bit of bureaucracy and oversight based on their absurd experiments. Such is life.

SilasX 9y ago
That sounds, to me, eerily close to the mentalities that Alexander rightly criticizes: - "It's no big deal because you can just pay off someone's who's in the know and can work the system rather than read the rules at face value." - "No amount of kafkaesque absurdity is too much, because Nazis."
- icelancer 9y ago
  What specifically sounds like that? I cannot decipher the context you are using those quotes in regarding my comment.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    For the first one: >"What SSC should have investigated and wrote up is that hospital and medical IRB is fraught with bureaucracy and that a private IRB industry has developed, entities inside that handle wide ranges of studies and turn around informed consent docs and things very fast (within a week). That is, even though Alexander had a long wait time just to hear responses, there are expensive services you can use that make all that wait time and pushback from hidden rules disappear, so you don't see it as a problem. For the second one: >A lot of IRB review is stupid. But messing with human subjects doesn’t have a good track record in this country. Our predecessors earned every bit of bureaucracy and oversight based on their absurd experiments. Such is life. You don't show a standard for the upper bound on when the absurdity is too much, dismissing any such concerns with appeal to some historical atrocities.
    - icelancer 9y ago
      >>That is, even though Alexander had a long wait time just to hear responses, there are expensive services you can use that make all that wait time and pushback from hidden rules disappear, so you don't see it as a problem. You can make the wait time disappear. In my experience, you cannot make the pushback disappear. I've been scolded multiple times by our IRB for improper and too-technical language in our Informed Consent forms, amongst other violations/gaffes. IRB is poorly-designed. Should it go away? Sure, in its current incarnation, yes. Will it? Like anything government + university designed, there is a snowball's chance in hell that anything with that many moving parts and bureaucracy will ever die a true death. The private markets designed a workaround for this and they are accepted as every bit as good as the university and medical IRBs. As far as "expensive," your time is valuable if you are a scientist. You should act accordingly. The IRB fees we pay are less than 7% of the fee it costs to publish in major peer-reviewed journals, which is another racket that is propped up by the government + university complex. So I don't consider it expensive in the least. (It is well under $500, to give you a hard number.)
      - SilasX 9y ago
        >You can make the wait time disappear. ... IRB is poorly-designed. Should it go away? Sure, in its current incarnation, yes. So, you agree with my points then? >As far as "expensive," your time is valuable if you are a scientist. You should act accordingly. I didn't say otherwise, and that's not relevant to Alexander's claim that the many of the standards are excessive and not merited.
        icelancer 9y ago
        >>So, you agree with my points then? I can't figure out what you are saying outside of it sounding like you are trying to trap me and be right about something. No, I don't think your original points are right at all given how the system was designed and navigated around in today's climate. I'm disengaging from future comments because I don't believe you argue in good faith. Good day.

SilasX 9y ago

That sounds, to me, eerily close to the mentalities that Alexander rightly criticizes: - "It's no big deal because you can just pay off someone's who's in the know and can work the system rather than read the rules at face value." - "No amount of kafkaesque absurdity is too much, because Nazis."

icelancer 9y ago
What specifically sounds like that? I cannot decipher the context you are using those quotes in regarding my comment.
- SilasX 9y ago
  For the first one: >"What SSC should have investigated and wrote up is that hospital and medical IRB is fraught with bureaucracy and that a private IRB industry has developed, entities inside that handle wide ranges of studies and turn around informed consent docs and things very fast (within a week). That is, even though Alexander had a long wait time just to hear responses, there are expensive services you can use that make all that wait time and pushback from hidden rules disappear, so you don't see it as a problem. For the second one: >A lot of IRB review is stupid. But messing with human subjects doesn’t have a good track record in this country. Our predecessors earned every bit of bureaucracy and oversight based on their absurd experiments. Such is life. You don't show a standard for the upper bound on when the absurdity is too much, dismissing any such concerns with appeal to some historical atrocities.
  - icelancer 9y ago
    >>That is, even though Alexander had a long wait time just to hear responses, there are expensive services you can use that make all that wait time and pushback from hidden rules disappear, so you don't see it as a problem. You can make the wait time disappear. In my experience, you cannot make the pushback disappear. I've been scolded multiple times by our IRB for improper and too-technical language in our Informed Consent forms, amongst other violations/gaffes. IRB is poorly-designed. Should it go away? Sure, in its current incarnation, yes. Will it? Like anything government + university designed, there is a snowball's chance in hell that anything with that many moving parts and bureaucracy will ever die a true death. The private markets designed a workaround for this and they are accepted as every bit as good as the university and medical IRBs. As far as "expensive," your time is valuable if you are a scientist. You should act accordingly. The IRB fees we pay are less than 7% of the fee it costs to publish in major peer-reviewed journals, which is another racket that is propped up by the government + university complex. So I don't consider it expensive in the least. (It is well under $500, to give you a hard number.)
    - SilasX 9y ago
      >You can make the wait time disappear. ... IRB is poorly-designed. Should it go away? Sure, in its current incarnation, yes. So, you agree with my points then? >As far as "expensive," your time is valuable if you are a scientist. You should act accordingly. I didn't say otherwise, and that's not relevant to Alexander's claim that the many of the standards are excessive and not merited.
      - icelancer 9y ago
        >>So, you agree with my points then? I can't figure out what you are saying outside of it sounding like you are trying to trap me and be right about something. No, I don't think your original points are right at all given how the system was designed and navigated around in today's climate. I'm disengaging from future comments because I don't believe you argue in good faith. Good day.