Fair disclosure: I am a lit/creative writing person with recent self-training and experience in internet research and IRB issues.
I agree: IRBs can be bad (there are some good sites I read about the problems of what happens when models developed for one or two disciplines are applied to others). They're also often bad in that they're only justification is keeping lawsuits from happening: I actually hold myself to a higher ethical standard than my university IRB (and I am an IRB member).
NO IRB person I know about would claim that an historian cannot write things that might make a Kennedy upset (public figures, disciplinary values). Nobody is going to tell a current student of mine that she cannot analyze the public documents put out by the Barbara Bush foundation in her analysis of literacy rhetoric because Babs might feel bad. That's just bizarre, completely a straw man argument.
Each university sets up its own IRB because the federal government mandates it. IRBs can be horrific (we had an IRB chair years ago who refused to allow ANY qualitative research whatsoever--the qualitative people cheered when he was replaced). But that's true of any university entity (or ANY group of people). Just because some politicians do bad things is not grounds for claiming all politicians are bad (though these days...)
And not all IRBs are the same, do the same thing, or work the same way. They can and do recognize the validity of other professional standards and models (the way oral historians have in fact created their own standards, ditto journalists, etc.). I know because my campus one does, and I doubt we're the only ones out there (odds are the bigger name the school, the more pressure to confirm there is).
I am not against scholarship on fandom: I DO scholarship on fandom. I am not the biggest fan of anonymous surveys, but I can live with them when they're well done. The issue is not "no scholarship," but the need for ethical, well informed, useful scholarship (and useful to more than just the academics involved).
And don't forget this group isn't doing scholarhip: they're doing a pop book on what "netporn" teaches "them" about the human brain.
no subject
I agree: IRBs can be bad (there are some good sites I read about the problems of what happens when models developed for one or two disciplines are applied to others). They're also often bad in that they're only justification is keeping lawsuits from happening: I actually hold myself to a higher ethical standard than my university IRB (and I am an IRB member).
NO IRB person I know about would claim that an historian cannot write things that might make a Kennedy upset (public figures, disciplinary values). Nobody is going to tell a current student of mine that she cannot analyze the public documents put out by the Barbara Bush foundation in her analysis of literacy rhetoric because Babs might feel bad. That's just bizarre, completely a straw man argument.
Each university sets up its own IRB because the federal government mandates it. IRBs can be horrific (we had an IRB chair years ago who refused to allow ANY qualitative research whatsoever--the qualitative people cheered when he was replaced). But that's true of any university entity (or ANY group of people). Just because some politicians do bad things is not grounds for claiming all politicians are bad (though these days...)
And not all IRBs are the same, do the same thing, or work the same way.
They can and do recognize the validity of other professional standards and models (the way oral historians have in fact created their own standards, ditto journalists, etc.). I know because my campus one does, and I doubt we're the only ones out there (odds are the bigger name the school, the more pressure to confirm there is).
I am not against scholarship on fandom: I DO scholarship on fandom. I am not the biggest fan of anonymous surveys, but I can live with them when they're well done. The issue is not "no scholarship," but the need for ethical, well informed, useful scholarship (and useful to more than just the academics involved).
And don't forget this group isn't doing scholarhip: they're doing a pop book on what "netporn" teaches "them" about the human brain.