8 ms·

Yep. AFAIK you have to get IRB approval to do literally anything with humans involved. Zero discretion is permitted because any amount of discretion degrades tr

by saulrh 8y ago

Yep. AFAIK you have to get IRB approval to do literally anything with humans involved. Zero discretion is permitted because any amount of discretion degrades trust in the system (and if you thought anti-intellectualism was bad these days, boy do I have a dystopia for you to imagine) and allows unacceptable failures to creep in purely due to human error. How many times have you submitted a small PR that obviously can't break anything, complaining about the annoyance all the time, only to find out that your "obviously right" PR was in fact badly wrong? How many times have you seen some bit of code and thought "this is weird, but it had to have been approved to get merged, so I probably don't have to worry too much about it"? Now multiply that by research with human subjects.

arkades 8y ago
Ish. Research in the educational setting involving routine educational activities is exempt from most IRB requirements, except for an initial review to confirm that it is the above.
gumby 8y ago
BTW you need IRB review for animal studies as well. It's typically pretty easy to get too -- you can shop around for a sympathetic IRB. In my experience it's been basically a rubber stamp. Note I work in industry not academia.
jrumbut 8y ago
Incredibly good reasons for extensive review of human research can be found here, for the skeptical or curious: https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/timeline/index.cfm https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/timel... Another more recent one: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/Story?id=4741269&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/Story?id=4741269&pag... More examples aren't hard to find at all, including the case last year of the gene-edited girls: https://gizmodo.com/chinese-scientist-who-created-crispr-babies-could-face-1831553751 https://gizmodo.com/chinese-scientist-who-created-crispr-bab... When you've got a burning question in mind and visions of tremendous benefits for all humanity (or saving some academic fields from themselves) it seems like a good idea to get your ideas reviewed.

by saulrh 8y ago

arkades 8y ago

Ish. Research in the educational setting involving routine educational activities is exempt from most IRB requirements, except for an initial review to confirm that it is the above.

gumby 8y ago

BTW you need IRB review for animal studies as well. It's typically pretty easy to get too -- you can shop around for a sympathetic IRB. In my experience it's been basically a rubber stamp. Note I work in industry not academia.

jrumbut 8y ago

Incredibly good reasons for extensive review of human research can be found here, for the skeptical or curious: https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/timeline/index.cfm https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/timel... Another more recent one: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/Story?id=4741269&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/Story?id=4741269&pag... More examples aren't hard to find at all, including the case last year of the gene-edited girls: https://gizmodo.com/chinese-scientist-who-created-crispr-babies-could-face-1831553751 https://gizmodo.com/chinese-scientist-who-created-crispr-bab... When you've got a burning question in mind and visions of tremendous benefits for all humanity (or saving some academic fields from themselves) it seems like a good idea to get your ideas reviewed.