Research Ethics Boards

Stumbled across this post today. Research ethics boards fill an important role in ensuring we are not performing dangerous or exploitative research. Before ethics boards became the norm, there were more than a few instances of highly questionable, dangerous experimentation performed on humans, particularly in medicine. REBs serve as a guard against that kind of research.

However, those protections should be tailored to potential for harm and effective at preventing such harm. This is not the case with all REBs for all studies. My personal experiences with REBs have been mixed, but a large heaping of unnecessary bureaucracy and needless fiddling with formatting have been typical. In my worst experience, I spent 3+ months to get a survey approved after countless back-and-forth exchanges, only one of which involved making anything that came close to meaningful changes. And this was in the "fast track" review system.

Apparently, my experiences are far from unique and may be on the benign side. In all cases, I lost time and so my window to actually perform the research was significantly shortened, which I believe did negatively impact the quality of those studies. Still, the studies were completed largely in their intended format, so the main downside was an inconvenience for me. Others' have had meaningful research denied, interrupted, or invalidated because of REBs. On the whole, REBs add a major inefficiency to the research process and can put a major damper on research studies getting started or completed.

The book mentioned in the linked post apparently makes the case to abolish REBs entirely. I think that's extreme, because REBs do represent a medium through which research can not only be made safer, but stronger as well. Particularly in medicine, this is essential, as the quality of research is critical to its value to society at large and even small changes to many studies could make a meaningful difference in their quality. Still. changes need to be made to the structure, powers, and mandates of REBs to facilitate that process.

The first steps to improving REBs should probably concern funding and oversight. Without enough resources, REBs can't move studies through quickly or draw on the opinions of experts. There are still ways they could improve throughput and expertise without increased funding, but it was clear from my interactions that those organizing the REB I was interacting with had a lot on their plates. In terms of oversight, many REBs are the final say on research projects, regardless of whether their opinions are valid or helpful. Researchers, knowing that the whims of an REB can sink their projects and that they'd have little-to-no recourse, tread lightly around REBs, even if their recommendations are trivial (or worse).

What surprises me is the relative apathy universities have towards their own REB's functionality. Research is the lifeblood of most major universities - publish or perish exists for a reason. Yet there seems to be little willpower to address what seems to be a major inefficiency in the research pipeline.

I've been involved in half a dozen research projects over the past 4 years or so and I would like to continue having a hand in research through the rest of my career. It would be great we could retain the oversight REBs provide while reducing their burden on researchers.