Content area
Full Text
As the regulation of research ethics in American universities has expanded, so has controversy over its legitimacy. On April 6 and 7, 2006, nearly two dozen scholars from around the country gathered at the Northwestern University School of Law to discuss "Censorship and Institutional Review Boards." Contributing to the vigorous exchange of ideas were medical research scientists, social scientists, law professors, university administrators, Institutional Review Board ("IRB") members, and current and former high-level federal government officials.1 The views at the conference ranged from strong advocacy for the existing regulatory scheme to calls for its abolition, with most scholars falling somewhere in between. What follows is an account of parts of this debate - as told by supporters and opponents alike - which, we hope, will inform the understanding of an institution that has rearranged traditional notions of academic freedom.
Besides simply introducing the articles in this issue, we set out in this Foreword to do two things. First, we hope to provide some of the context for the debate that unfolded at Northwestern in April 2006. Although IRBs may seem foreign to those outside of the academy, what they seek to regulate is quite familiar: the manner in which information is gathered. To illustrate the values at stake, we provide examples from a familiar setting that also involves research - journalism. Second, the Foreword highlights the relative ease with which journalists conduct their studies when, in a university setting, an academic wishing to conduct similar research is likely to run into obstacles in the course of seeking IRB approval. In the end, our Foreword merely presents the juxtaposition and raises the obvious but under-theorized questions. For answers and theories, the reader should turn to the articles that follow.
In early January 2007, ABC News Primetime broadcast a story about ABC 's partial replication of the famous 1960s obedience experiment of Stanley Milgram.2 In ABC's version:
One of the first participants in the study was Troy, a 39-year-old electrician. Like all the participants, he was paid $50 and was told that the money would be his to keep, even if he quit the experiment early. Brian, in the role of the "experimenter," informed Troy that he was taking part in a learning and memory study...