Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Who Risks What in Social Research?

1980; Wiley; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3561272

1552-146X

E. L. Pattullo,

Nursing Education, Practice, and Leadership

Thirteen years ago the federal government issued regulations intended to protect human in biomedical and behavioral It was high time and few questioned the necessity. Last August, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare proposed to extend its control to studies in any field that seek generalizable knowledge by methods that include the collection of information by which individuals, living or dead, may be identified. The principal instrument of control is to require prior review and approval of research plans by an institutional review board (IRB). If DHEW goes ahead with its rules, a political scientist combing the New York Times for information about individual politicians, in an effort to arrive at a general conclusion, will first have to get permission from the university's IRB. A sociologist studying leisure activities must ge prior approval before making notes on Carl Yastrzemski's behavior in the outfield at Fenway Park. A stud nt of contemporary history will violate the rules should he or he interview members of Congress, planning to identify them, without IRB approval. I doubt that the government intends the regulations to apply to these activities but, as written, there is no doubt that they do. In a mistaken effort to protect subjects from miniscule possibilities of harm that those same subjects-like all of us-risk and suffer daily in other areas of life, the regulators are encroaching dangerously on freedom of speech. Nor is it only the proposed rules that go too far; the regulations already in force interfere with relationships between consenting adults in a way that none would tolerate were the activities not characterized as research. The Background of the Problem