Can someone set up an independent IRB that you can use that is more of a UL-style IRB?
Who exactly needs to get approval from an institutional review board (IRB)?
121–130 of 165 posts
Re: Who exactly needs to get approval from an institutional review board (IRB)?
#122Medical device research to reduce risk (liability)
Re: Who exactly needs to get approval from an institutional review board (IRB)?
#123IRBs are one of the most wasteful and hurtful institutions in the developing world today. In order to prevent a few possible ethical lapses, they smother hundreds of good potential research. See Scott Alexander's works on IRB review.
> See Scott Alexander's works on IRB review.
Links:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/31/highlights-from-the-co...
Re: Who exactly needs to get approval from an institutional review board (IRB)?
#124The answer is no, you don't need permission, but you do incur a legal and ethical risk whenever you do research, and as such, the more you can do to strengthen the legal and ethical arguments in your defense, the better. IRBs are simply a way to say "I had an independent group of ethical and legal authority review my research and they thought it was ok".
It's hard to take the article seriously since 1) It doesn't even reference the relevant law 2) The relevant law is so simple and clear 42 USC 289(a) states: "The Secretary shall by regulation require that each entity which applies for a grant, contract, or cooperative agreement under this chapter for any project or program which involves the conduct of biomedical or behavioral research involving human subjects submit…
Yes, but a university or other institution will often also require IRB review in additional cases, because maybe they don't want to let researchers accidentally cause brain damage just because a billionaire rather than a government is paying.
Re: Who exactly needs to get approval from an institutional review board (IRB)?
#125This is a nice first pass at the common sense problems with interpreting FDA regulations. I imagine that those who have been dealing with this for some time aren't as confused as the author suggests we should be. On the first pass, for example, are human subjects involved? Do you interact with humans? No, then probably not. There are many subtleties after that, but it's not so bad as the poster suggests. I remember a comment one investigator told me about animal research, where he illustrated the problem by saying you can go into a grocery store and buy a leg of lamb and do anything you want with it, but don't call it research!
Re: Who exactly needs to get approval from an institutional review board (IRB)?
#126Medical device research to reduce risk (liability)
Rico
Re: Who exactly needs to get approval from an institutional review board (IRB)?
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming the author isn't being disingenuous, what does this line actually bring to the table? If the article is thoughtful and nuanced, why not write with the maturity that a thoughtful and nuanced topic deserves? You can do it in a way that invites thought and deliberation and isn't stuffy or overly serious. I just don't see what value interjecting this kind of preciousness is supposed to bring. If it's supposed to…
If you're really asking what the point of humor is, I don't think there's any answer you'll find satisfying. I'll take a stab at it though. In this case, it functions as a hook; it's there to give you a slight chuckle before diving into a long and relatively dry informative article. It's some clear sarcasm makes you evaluate the supposed assertion made - that people who push for IRB evaluations are meanie-heads - and…
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Re: Who exactly needs to get approval from an institutional review board (IRB)?
#128I mean tons of retrospective studies are literally "IRB exempt" (and highlighted as such in their methods) where no explicit consent is required or needed. Physicians doing case reviews don't need consent of the patient this work. Doing retrospective analyses for defining clinical phenotypes on patient data that has been aggregated isn't needed either. Collecting clinical MRIs to do deep learning doesn't require an I…
I am in a lab that does EEG research and have recently been doing research using self-supervised learning on EEG. We had to get approval for "secondary use of data" to use open datasets from https://openneuro.org/ and we had to jump through a bunch of hoops with our IRB. It was harder to get it approved than the EEG experiments we run ourselves for some reason.
Re: Who exactly needs to get approval from an institutional review board (IRB)?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming the author isn't being disingenuous, what does this line actually bring to the table? If the article is thoughtful and nuanced, why not write with the maturity that a thoughtful and nuanced topic deserves? You can do it in a way that invites thought and deliberation and isn't stuffy or overly serious. I just don't see what value interjecting this kind of preciousness is supposed to bring. If it's supposed to…
It seems you'd answer your own questions here and maybe some of your frustration if you actually proceeded to read the rest of the article, which explains quite clearly the point being made. You being exasperated by the tone or style isn't really relevant to the substance of what was written about, or to anyone else really.
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Re: Who exactly needs to get approval from an institutional review board (IRB)?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
And, conversely, when people _do_ weaponize institutional review requirements to police research, you have a much more pressing and bigger problem: the existence of people who would be happy to find any mechanism to police research.
I would argue that the weaponization is an intrinsic part of the nature of review boards. Not just for ethics, but accross pretty much all categories. It's been pretty universal in my experience that people will use the power given to them to push their agenda, which is generally only somewhat aligned with the nameplate mission. E.g. a vegan or vegetarian on an ERB has an obvious, if soft, conflict of interests that…
But...people and people-communications make it work, i.e "Technical problems are easy, people are hard." This is a truism of life. I think this comment in the marca linux kernel brouhaha thread is relevant.
(and most IRB squabbles that involve non-invasion/low risk research never really get as bad as that, at least in my experience, knock on wood)