Across a wide range of academic fields, scholars who want to do research that in some way involves human beings need to get approval from their school’s institutional review board (IRB). This is meant to ensure that the research is conducted ethically. Nothing wrong in that, but it gives IRBs the power to block research based solely on their whims. That’s a problem.
In today’s Martin Center article, Russell Warne looks at a court case that challenges the right of an IRB to prevent a research project.
He writes:
This system is being questioned by an unassuming graduate student who is the plaintiff of a new lawsuit challenging the IRB’s authority to supervise her research. Idil Issak at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville is an anthropology student who wants to conduct research by interviewing eight female Ethiopian nationals working in the domestic service industry in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). She wants to interview her research participants using standard research methods in cultural anthropology to gain new insights into these workers’ experiences.
What could be unethical or “harmful” to the workers in simply asking them questions? The IRB won’t say but has repeatedly blocked the researcher from proceeding.
Warne continues:
According to the complaint filed in the lawsuit, she has applied for approval for her research at least five times and has been rejected each time. The IRB requested that Issak meet UAE legal requirements that did not exist. At one point, the IRB even required her to obtain a “Memo of Cultural Appropriateness.” Apparently, the IRB does not think she is qualified to determine on her own whether her research is culturally appropriate, even though Issak has a bachelor’s degree and graduate-level training in anthropology, was born in East Africa (in Somalia), and has lived in the UAE twice.
The basis for the lawsuit is that a governmental entity is interfering with freedom of speech. Issak’s legal team is at the New Civil Liberties Alliance.