In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

c h a p t e r t w o THE SPREAD OF INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW As late as the summer of 1966, ethical debates in the social sciences and Public Health Service requirements for prior review of federally funded research seemed to have nothing to do with each other. Over the next decade, however, federal of- ficials applied the requirements ever more broadly, so that by the early 1970s anthropologists, sociologists, and other social scientists began hearing from university administrators that they would have to get their research plans approved by ethics committees. For the most part, those writing the new rules ignored social scientists, their ethics, and their methods. This was particularly true in the congressional debates that produced the National Research Act of 1974, the federal statute that governs IRBs to this day. Less frequently, federal officials did consult social scientists, only to ignore the recommendations they received in reply. By 1977 they had begun a pattern that would persist for decades—writing policies for social scientists without meaningful input from social scientists. And social scientists had begun their own pattern of debating whether to work within the system or seek exclusion from it. what is behavioral science? The first expansion of IRB review took place within the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (DHEW), the parent of the National Institutes of Health and the Public Health Service. Between 1966 and 1971, officials expanded the requirement of institutional review from the medical research for which it was originally designed to a much broader range of psychological, anthropological, and sociological research sponsored by the department, and they even encouraged it for projects not sponsored by DHEW but taking place in universities that accepted department funds. As these policies were being shaped, social scientists 32 e t h i c a l i m p e r i a l i s m did get some opportunity to express their views, and, by and large, they objected to the review requirement. But policy-making power in this area remained in the hands of the medical and psychological researchers at the NIH, and they largely ignored the social scientists’ complaints. Two psychologists—Mordecai Gordon of the NIH’s Division of Research Grants and Eli Rubinstein, associate director for extramural activities for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)—seem to have been particularly influential in shaping early policies toward behavioral research. Interviewed in 1971, Gordon cited Gallagher’s investigation as just one of four factors influencing the spread of the requirement, along with Gordon’s own thinking, the opinions of his NIH colleagues, and letters from institutions asking whether the surgeon general had meant to include behavioral science in the PHS’s policy. Though Gordon cited Gallagher’s letter as the “most forceful” factor, that alone could not have steered policy in a direction opposite to the agency’s wishes. More likely, Gordon and Rubinstein welcomed Gallagher’s letter as a ratification of their own concerns.1 In 1966 they took the first steps toward imposing the institutional review specified by the PHS’s February order (PPO 129) on social science in general. The NIH first publicly broached the issue of ethics review of social science in June 1966, when it sponsored a conference on ethics that brought together anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, and other scholars, many of them members of the NIH’s own Study Section in the Behavioral Sciences. The assembled social scientists acknowledged such potential dangers as psychological harms and the invasion of privacy. But, as sociologist Gresham Sykes reported, even participants who wanted clearer ethical standards had “serious reservations ” about the proposed application of the PHS’s new policy toward social science research. Sykes, a former executive officer of the American Sociological Association, explained their reservations in terms that would echo for decades: There are the dangers that some institutions may be over-zealous to insure the strictest possible interpretation, that review committees might represent such a variety of intellectual fields that they would be unwieldy and incapable of reasonable judgment in specialized areas, and that faculty factions might subvert the purpose of review in the jealous pursuit of particular interests. There is also the danger that an institutional review committee might become a mere rubber stamp, giving the appearance of a solution, rather than the substance, for a serious problem of growing complexity which requires continuing discussion. Effective responsibility cannot be equated with a signature on a piece of paper...

Share