3 thoughts on ““Eventually all information will belong to whoever has the best lawyers.”

  1. I also very much agree with Tabarrok. A few years ago, I was running a survey in rural Vietnam with some colleagues, and we got hung up with IRB approval. We were planning to pay participants 100,000 VND for taking the survey, which comes out to a bit less than the average daily wage in the area we were working in. The IRB was saying that, because the survey asked about some potentially sensitive topics, our payment was too much, that it might have the effect of getting people to take the survey who otherwise wouldn’t want to (which is exactly what the effect of these incentive payments is always meant to be, if you only include participants who just take surveys for the love of the game, your study is going to have some problems). Silly us, not knowing that giving people money to compensate them for their time is comparable to the Tuskegee Experiments.

    • I can’t speak to the specifics of your survey, and I know almost nothing about life in Vietnam. But there is such a thing as sensitive information: answers that can cause a person to be prosecuted, or lose custody of children, or lose a job, or face ostracism in their community, among other things. If divulging such information is part of your survey, then there need to be good precautions to assure that the information will not be disclosed by the researchers. And, given the risk to the participant, there needs to be an independent third-party who verifies that such precautions are in place, are adequate to the task, and are being properly implemented. Enter the IRB.

      And, no, giving people money to compensate them for their time is not comparable to the Tuskegee Experiments. But, as you were offering an average local daily wage as payment, unless completing your survey (and, if applicable, time to travel to and from the place of administration of the survey) were something approximating a day, then you are not simply compensating them for their time. You are offering a substantial reward beyond that. If the potential participants are poor, they can easily be seduced into taking on excessive risks for such rewards. So I think your IRB is citing a legitimate principle here–whether it is appropriately applied to your specific survey, I cannot say.

      All of that said, IRBs should greatly streamline their review of social science research. Most of it is non-interventional and the observations to be undertaken pose little or no risk even should the data be disclosed. In this situation, it should be possible to fill out a one page form briefly attesting to this and attaching a copy of the survey instrument, and then get an expedited approval with short turnaround. (Interventional research and surveys that ask for sensitive information are a separate matter and require a somewhat more extensive review–but these are the minority of social science projects.) Understand that this would not require any change in the laws and government regulations: IRBs already have the legal latitude to do this. That they don’t do it is a problem, and one that could be solved by the Deans providing a push in this direction.

  2. I think there are some reasonable points here, and I can certainly think of research that has been, though should not have been, curtailed by IRBs. But you’re going to have to work really hard to convince me that lack of HCTs for COVID-19 is a legitimate example of this.

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