Institutional review boards have been set up at nearly all research institutions in the US, to protect the welfare of human research participants.

Over the past decade, IRB's have grown greatly in power and range of authority. The home institutions have, however, largely abrogated their responsiblity to oversee and control the procedures followed by IRB's. As a consequence, the IRB's have increasingly harrassed researchers and slowed down important research, without protecting any human research participants.

The purpose of this site is to chronicle the abuses by IRB's.

Contribute your IRB horror story. Here are the IRBwatch rules:
  1. Send your materials through email, by clicking the button on the right.
  2. IRBwatch will edit the materials into a succinct narrative.
  3. Your approval of the narrative will be required before it goes on this site.

Reference Sites

HHS Office of Human Research Protection
HHS Office of Human Research Protection, Policy Guidelines
NIH Office of Extramural Research, Human Subjects Page
The Common Rule (45CFR46)
Glossary for The Common Rule
Articles on IRBs
Academe. Should all disciplines be subject to the Common Rule?
Becker.Comment on Kevin D. Haggerty, Ethics Creep
DHHS.Institutional Review Boards: Their role in reviewing approved research.
Hey.Investigating allegations of research misconduct: the vital need for due process.
Haggerty.Ethics creep: governing social science research in the name of ethics.
Lightfoot. Fear and loathing of human subjects.
Minnis.Ethics committees are risk averse.
Perlstadt.The researcher's bill of rights
Shea.Don't talk to the humans.
University of Illinois.White paper.
Harvard University. The Ideal IRB and The IRB Researcher's Assessment Tool
Merz. Is Human Subjects Research in Crisis?
Shapiro. Ethical Considerations in Research on Human subjects.
Hamilton. Institutional Review Boards: Politics, Power, Purpose and Process in a Regulatory Organization.
Northwestern University. Symposium on Censorship and IRBs New

The IRB Chronicles
IRBs as agents of censorship
IRB mission creep at Brown University
The sociology of IRBs
Are IRBs Unethical?
Would a 1930's IRB have found the Tuskegee study unethical?
Why should we believe IRBs work?
Where is the evidence that IRBs protect anyone?
Just in case you thought "minimal risk" was a well-defined term
IRB process at UW goes awry.
Even  Science  begins to detect privacy fetishism.
Let's ask the IRB to verify something it can't possibly know
IRB puts students at risk
Childhood assent absurdity
Do you understand this HIPAA form?
Suppression of forensic research
Telling people what they already know can hurt them
Action on IRB mission creep
The dangers of golf research
Open-ended responses to an IRB survey
IRBwatch says: Most people who do not do research believe that IRBs protect human research participants, and that researchers who complain about arbitrary and capricious IRB actions are just chronic whiners. The first step to improving the situation is not to try to reform IRBs from the inside. It is to document the abuses, so the non-researchers can begin to see what we are up against.