…involving explorations from surveys and oral histories to psychology experiments and medical trials, gets little attention.

Federal oversight in this area has recently come under fire, reports Inside Higher Ed, for “overreaching, especially in the humanities, and for necessitating significant overhead at colleges and universities.”

But is there too much oversight or too little? And what of its quality? What triggers these questions is the recent suspension by the Office for Human Research Protections of projects (concerning research into African-American health issues) at Bluefield State College, a small historically black commuter college, because of alleged compliance failures, i.e., BSC’s neglect to consider the purpose of the studies and to provide details on participants’ informed consent and ways to protect their privacy. The feds are even questioning whether a legitimate campus board even existed to provide such information.

The public needs to know more about human-subjects research and how its funding is vetted.