Hi On Thu, 6 May 2004, Annette Taylor, Ph. D. wrote: > We will have to disagree here completely. It is the job of > the IRB to decide on the quality of research if the quality > shifts the balance of cost/benefit to cost.
IRB members are not in a position to make this kind of judgment, or at least in this case they did not do a very good job. They would be better to focus on risk, and ONLY address methodological questions when the risk is elevated. If we take the example that stimulated this discussion, using a measure that lacks indices of reliability and validity (note that is not the same as saying that the instrument is not reliable and not valid) will itself provide evidence on these questions. Correlations with other variables, internal consistency, and the like will move the research area along by documenting the benefits of the new measure. Lack of such positive results would similar indicate to future researchers that more basic (i.e., measurement, conceptualization issues) work is needed. New knowledge is new knowledge and always of benefit (to somone). > Participants do give up theri time and energy and are not > often compensated. Most subject pools use a genteel form of > coercion that we leave a blind eye to--do this 3 of 5 times > per semester or do a much more onerous task, or don't pass > the course. Let's be real. Most students do not want to > participate in research but most intro psych students have > to, or they have to do article reviews or some such nonsense. Given this negative attitude about the benefits of participating in actual studies, your emphasis on "wasting time" is more understandable. But I disagree with you. I think there are real benefits of participating in research, especially given feedback. And of course students don't want to participate in lots of things that we think are good for them (e.g., tests, essays, projects, lectures, ...). Failing students is overly harsh. Our students lose one letter grade for failing to meet the research requirement (6 for day students, 3 for evening students), but they are never failed because of this (i.e., D students remain a D). In thinking about the benefits of participating in research, it is important to appreciate that the benefits will not be universal for all our students. But that is also true of other well accepted pedagogical experiences, such as those listed above. > I don't think IRBs are too powerful at all. You need to sit > on an IRB for a couple of years to see what comes before > committees to get a real sense of what confounded garbage > often makes it way to us. As chair I am often the only one > reading the vast majority of studies and I have say I have > seen some truly terrible proposals. It has changed my > perspective completely. This is a non sequiter, I think. If I can paraphrase, in order to keep garbage research from being conducted we need to sanction inocuous research with (allegedly) minor flaws that have no harmful consequences for participants (barring perhaps the not universally accepted "wasting their time" argument). > I think unless you have had the experience of this you might > not understand the perspective of those who have see truly > horribly confounded studies come before them. There is also a > real danger to the understanding of science that comes from > people participating in bad studies. The job of the IRB is to make more ethical research, not to make better research. I'm sure there are numerous examples of researchers having to "water down" their research (i.e., compromise it) in order to meet ethical guidelines. With respect to the last point, it would be interesting to see if participating in bad studies harms or helps students' understanding of science. Best wishes Jim ============================================================================ James M. Clark (204) 786-9757 Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax University of Winnipeg 4L05D Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED] CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark ============================================================================ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
