Extract

Historians rarely experience a review of proposed research as part of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process. Our ethical concerns are more focused on honest representations of primary materials, diligent archival searching, appropriate reading of secondary sources, and avoidance of plagiarism. According to Zachary M. Schrag's powerful new book, we should, however, be afraid, very afraid, of the potential threat of IRBs to social science scholarship. Schrag wants us to worry about the dangerous mission creep of the ethics uberlords, backed by the power of the federal government and financially dependent and lawsuit wary academic administrations. At stake, he argues, is our disciplinary independence and academic freedom to do research that matters.

Schrag makes his point of view clear with the book's title. He provides evidence of IRBs that over the last forty years have wreaked havoc on innocent scholars as cowed professional associations and academic institutions gave in to federal power. His careful review of archival materials, although at times a bit tedious for the non‐policy specialist, captures the hypocrisy and doublespeak of ethics bureaucrats who cannot seem to differentiate between a multisite medical research project and a lowly graduate student trying to conduct observations in a public school classroom. This is a story, Schrag reminds us, about policy expansionism, the inability of social scientists to reject protectionism that was developed for medical research, and the failure of academic leaders to protect their faculty and students. Schrag suggests that the major problem is that the federal government's pressure tactics can deny research dollars to cash‐strapped universities.

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