Before I joined the IRB team (ahem, the “regulatorz”), I thought IRB reviewers were members of a secret society whose sole purpose was to strike down research. I believed my research would be put on the IRB butcher’s block, just like those before me, and be chopped into little bits.
I can’t stress the point enough—IRB reviewers are not the menacing force I had originally perceived. In fact, I’ve written about the inner workings of IRBs... Read More
Monthly Archives
March 2017
Submitting a new IRB protocol takes time and it is easy to forget why some policies exist in the first place. Let’s briefly take a look back at the origins of the modern IRB. This historical accounting prioritizes brevity over depth, but I provided some external links for anyone interested in reading more about these events.
IN THE BEGINNING
During the twentieth century, biomedical and behavioral researchers often used their “best judgment” as a standard of ethical... Read More