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INTRODUCTION On 18 November 2004, Hunter College told Professor Bernadette McCauley to cease all her research; she was under investigation. In a letter sent by certified mail both to McCauley’s home and office, two professors warned her that she had put the entire City University of New York at risk, and that her actions would be reported to the federal government.1 What dreadful crime had McCauley committed ? She had obtained the phone numbers of four nuns who had grown up in Washington Heights and who might give advice to some history students researching the neighborhood. McCauley thought she was just arranging some casual conversations.2 To Hunter College’s Committee for the Protection of Human Research Participants, however, McCauley’s potential interaction with the nuns might be “research which involves human subjects.” By failing to seek permission to conduct it, McCauley had committed a serious academic offense. The committee began to investigate not only McCauley’s contact with the nuns, but also her use of archival documents while researching a book. McCauley thought this was absurd, and she hired a lawyer to resist the pressure. But on being told her job was at risk, she gave the committee the information it wanted. After six months, it concluded that her work was not subject to review after all.3 McCauley’s case was extreme, but it illustrates the powers that institutional review boards (IRBs), such as Hunter’s committee, can wield over almost every scholar in the United States who wants to interview, survey, or observe people, or to train students to do so. More and more since the late 1990s, these IRBs have claimed moral and legal authority over research in the humanities and social sciences . Researchers who wish to survey or interview people must first complete ethical training courses, then submit their proposed research for prior approval, and later accept the boards’ changes to their research strategies. Researchers who 2 e t h i c a l i m p e r i a l i s m do not obey the boards may lose funding or promotions, or, in the case of students , be denied degrees. Most social science projects proceed through IRB review relatively unimpeded , but a significant number do not. Since the 1970s—and especially since the mid-1990s—IRBs have told many scholars they can only ask questions under conditions that make research difficult or impossible. These researchers are angry about the obstacles put in front of them, but they are not the only losers. While we cannot measure the research lost to ethics review, it is clear that as a result of IRB oversight, society as whole has fewer books and articles, and has fewer scholars willing to interact with other human beings. As a result, we know less about how casinos treat their employees and how doctors treat their patients. We know less about the daily workings of legislatures and strip clubs, about what it’s like to be a gay Mormon or an AIDS activist. We know less about why some people become music educators and others become suicide bombers.4 And we have ever more students—undergraduates and graduates—who are being discouraged from academic careers that depend on talking to other people. For anyone who values scholarship, IRBs are a matter of concern. All academic research has implicit or explicit requirements, often involving committees of peers. Scholars, by the nature of their profession, agree to conduct their research within certain rules. A scholar who plagiarizes or falsifies data may not have committed a crime or a tort. Yet, if found out, he may well be disciplined , even dismissed from his job. On a more routine level, scholars must impress committees of their peers in order to have articles and books published by scholarly presses, gain tenure, and win research grants. But the human subjects rules that IRBs enforce are strikingly different from those evaluations in two respects. First, they seek to restrain scholars at the start of their investigations. Rather than trusting scholars to behave and then punishing offenders, as is the case with rules against plagiarism or fabrication, the IRB system seeks to predict which projects might do harm. For oral historians, ethnographers , and other researchers who begin a project not knowing whom they will meet and what questions they will ask, such a prediction is often impossible. Second, while scholars seeking publication or accused of research misconduct can generally hope to...

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