Institutional Review Board

[selfishgene]

A judgment body from whose decisions there is no appeal; secret regulations, unknown, typically, even to body members; an ever-widening scrutiny, even of mundane activities, for unconforming ideologies.We can see the bureaucratic mindset of prior restraint in its full horror here. Every attempt by any person to rationally investigate a topic must

Comments

[selfishgene]

Damn, just had to delete my first comment spam on this journal.

Meta-rule

[hodja]

As an interesting exercise, I would suggest trying to formulate a meta-rule (e.g. imagine that you are writing the constitution/charter/whatever for a new society) that would prohibit the formation of bodies like this. In plain English, the challenge is to define with reasonable precision what "like this" means. What is the root of evil here?

Re: Meta-rule

[selfishgene]

State > coercive taxation > tax funded research > co-option of scientists > scientists meekly accept control > control becomes increasingly arbitrary since there is no competition and no possibility of refusing to fund them or work with them.
In short our enemy is the state, as always. Once people are compelled to pay eternally for a service, there are no limits to the scope, size and inefficiency of said service.
If there was choice I would donate/invest money for research (if at all) only to organizations which elevated reason and science above legalism, superstition and bureaucracy.

Re: Meta-rule

[smandal]

There is still some accountability: big-name scientists can leave institutions with stupid IRBs and move to other institutions with less stupid ones -- and take their grant money with them.

Institutions can also contract out IRB work to for-profit agencies. They are easier to fire than internal IRBs.

Re: Meta-rule

[selfishgene]

Those are fairly high cost methods of solving the problem. I have already seen some leftist complaining about for-profit IRBs simply rubber-stamping everything. There will be attempts to centralize control with this 'abuse' as a pretext.

[waitingforoct]

This has not been my experience at all with IRBs (and although some have to have, by their charter, a community member, there is rarely if ever more than one non-medical person on the board). The boards are bound by the Geneva Convention and charged with protecting human subjects. The only rejections I've ever been a part of were for consent forms that were too difficult to understand (easily fixed), and one crazy allergist (in MA) who continually came back to the board with plans to test a penicillin allergy test on penicillin allergic patients (we deemed it too risky) - it was soon moot as the guy went on to murder his wife.

[selfishgene]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad to hear the system isn't totally rotten. (Since my life may depend in it someday). I don't work in medicine or research myself so I like to hear from people on the 'inside'.