RESEARCH General Education

RESEARCH POLICY
Guidelines for human-subject research too broad, scholar says

Mark Reutter, Business & Law Editor
(217) 333-0568; mreutter@uiuc.edu

4/1/03

Photo by Bill Wiegand Matthew W. Finkin, an Illinois law professor, argues in an analysis of Institutional Review Boards that the system requiring faculty members to get clearance before conducting research involving human subjects is overly broad and raises the specter of institutional censorship.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The system requiring faculty members to get clearance before conducting research involving human subjects is overly broad and raises the specter of institutional censorship, a legal scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will argue at an upcoming conference.

"At a minimum, the system needs to be reformed and sharpened, both substantively and procedurally," Matthew W. Finkin, an Illinois law professor, argues in an analysis of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), which have the power to reject research on grounds that it may harm, discomfort or invade the privacy of individuals who interact with researchers.

Finkin questions the application of a concept of harm that goes beyond the definition established by the U.S. courts in daily life. While it may be possible to justify holding researchers to higher standards than in daily life, that justification has never been addressed by the IRB system.

Why such standards are necessary in disciplines with "no history of abuse or other legitimating context to give institutional warrant" needs to be answered by IRB boards and university administrators. So, too, the general claim that a university can regulate the research of its faculty.

"Academic freedom is the researcher’s, not the university’s, freedom," Finkin wrote. "A professor cannot be fired for refusing to give the right spin on her research as dictated by the university president, by the trustees or by the application of ‘community attitudes.’ But the insular nature of IRB decisions, and the lack of visibility and accountability, prevent us from learning whether or not the boards deny or suspend research approval on impermissible grounds or whether researchers tend to shy away from projects that might enmesh them in bureaucratic warfare with their IRBs."

Finkin, a labor-law and privacy expert, is scheduled to be one of a dozen speakers at a conference on human subject protection regulations to be held April 11-12 at the Illinois College of Law. The conference is billed as the first interdisciplinary gathering of scholars aimed at assessing the impact of IRBs on academic research, especially in the humanities and social sciences.

IRBs were established in the 1970s to monitor medical and behavioral research involving human subjects in the wake of several scandals where human subjects were deceived by medical researchers or harmed in the course of biomedical experiments. "Over the years these biomedical standards have expanded into all areas of research at universities, whether or not the rules are applicable to a particular discipline or not," said C.K. Gunsalus, the conference organizer.

While the goal of ethical professional conduct is laudable, the requirement of such rules raises questions of "zealous or wooden enforcement" inconsistent with unfettered academic inquiry, Finkin said.

"The procedural flaws in the system needed to be attended to — time limits set, reporting requirements of reasoned decisions imposed, appeals provided for. Giving any body an unreviewable veto authority over a faculty member’s research is repugnant," he concludes.