I need to moan about Ethics

[dodi1978]

Has applying for Ethics permission become similarly onerous at your institutions?

The process starts with a highly complex online survey which is completely impossible to navigate by MA students, particularly those who don't have English as first language. I now advise my own MA students to design their projects in a way that means they don't have to go any further in applying for Ethics permission, as this would be impossible to support. Other programmes have, for the same reason, moved from MA dissertations to other models (e.g. summer modules + extended project which is written without primary data).

Once you are through the form and are told that you have to apply for Ethics, the process is ridiculous in terms of the paperwork required (including a lot of information which is reduplicated on different forms) and the level of knowledge required (e.g. of governance issues & data processing when working with institutions outside of UK / EU / GDPR reach areas). Oh, yes, and they have got rid of the drop in surgeries they ran a few years ago where you could have got advice on this - now you have to give it your best guess as to what is permissible or not and hope for the best.

No advice on website. Inconsistent feedback from different reviewers. Latest instalment is my PhD student who has now been told that she has to have her full information sheet as intro text on an online survey. The target group of the survey will never read this, in fact they are likely to drop out of the survey at this stage. There seem to be no consistent standards on this as other PGR students previously simply gave the most basic information (e.g. what the survey is about, it's anonymous, don't have to take part, etc.).

Length of process. No consideration that some research is bound to specific timelines - I once submitted an application in early summer so that we could start research at the start of semester 1, but with all the governance bla bla and legal being involved we still couldn't start in time. My PhD student has waited since last October, with her application having been bounced back at least four times now. Lots of comments on methodological issues / analysis. The length of process is now delaying her confirmation viva in which she could have her work looked at by subject experts.

Rant over. Do you share my pain???

Our university is very thorough, especially on GDPR issues (pages of stuff for a Privacy Impact Assessment etc). But they are also pretty flexible on having a general ethics cover that can be used for several projects. So my lab has an ethics number that can cover generic projects from all my students over about 4 years. I have to renew it as needed and get an amendment if the project goes outside basic parameters. But it is flexible enough to manage.

the only advice I heard for dealing with difficult ethics is to volunteer for the ethics committee and then you are in a position to make the system work better. But that is obviously a lot of work. Putting in a collective complaint on how ethics hold-ups are 'ruining the student experience' might also get some movement?

@Parietal I have heard about these standard protocols in other subject areas, but I think they are less common in mine as projects tend to be very individual... but I'll have to look into this.

I have complained about the PGR holdups, and things have started moving on this front... but slowly! Apparently, there were quite a few issues with PGR students in my faculty, so my student was not alone. I just wished for the whole process to be less 'hostile' (as this is what it feels like) and anxiety-inducing. It'd be nice to be able to have a conversation with the Ethics committee, to have consistent advice on expectations etc.

I have been on the Ethics committee for two years, but have dropped this role now. It was extremely time-consuming and it started affecting my own research.

onerous: yes
It's a topic that sets many of us on a rant.

The process actually interferes with getting good data. & doing many types of studies. It can take 3-4 years to get ethics approval to run a simple case control study (from the ethics committee who work for the funder who only gave the money on stipulation you run the case control study). Means you think very hard about can you even get a grant to run that long.

Our IRB considers itself to have research governance role so weigh in on things like stats methods. Any research that isn't secondary data analysis - our IRB has to grant approval which is in addition to whatever other IRB approval must be secured.

There's stakeholder engagement strategy, PPIPE, separate national govt approval, full breadth of prior literature, statistics you might use, registrations, data security x 10, strategy to include the digitally excluded, duty of care ... etc. All of which IRB insist they have remit to make you include.

The most amazing thing about the rapid covid vaccine development is not the science, nor funding nor political will, it's the flipping bureaucracy revolution. The ethics approval CAN move at lighting speed after all.

Examples:

1. IRB insisted PhD student needed a dedicated phone SIM for her field work contacts. Must not use her private phone. She was baffled. We didn't have budget to buy nor did she want to switch to a 2-SIM phone; nor did she want to carry & keep track of information on 2 phones. "Why are they just dinosaurs, don't they understand I can BLOCK numbers if someone is horrible?"

1. My institution social media can tweet a survey we are doing for research; I can retweet that and add comments. What I cannot do (says IRB) is advertise the survey originally from my Twitter account. ditto Facebook. Because me advertising original survey from my own social media account might attract abuse. My name is all over the survey as person to complain to if there are survey complaints, and I am easily found online, including on social media. for those who wanted to send abuse directly.

WTAF. What protection arises by making me unable to advertise directly?

I have worked in clinical research and encountered similar problems. We worked around it by travelling for ethical approval at certain centres which are far more pragmatic than others. Generally panels staffed by pragmatic people familiar with the subject matter and issues are fine, panels staffed by people who have not been exposed to certain common problems before are a non starter.

Is there a process of transferable approval your students can use to bypass your local process?

An example of a bonkers ethical refusal a colleague had was a first in man drug study being refused permission because (as has been standard procedure for decades) the participants had to stay on site 24/7 for two weeks, eat a set menu, and sleep in an open nightingale type ward.

Ugh. Ethics approval. Does anyone else's University require ethics approval for using collabaorator's secondary data? I have to bug my collaborators for THEIR ethics approvals so that I am allowed to work with them. Also, if multiple Schools are collaborating within our Uni, the ethics application needs to go through ALL of their School boards. It's rage-inducing. The School boards are often full of people that know very little about ethics, particular in subjects that rarely deal with it, yet feel like they "must" do something, so you get tons of irrelevant questions and various other things to do/answer.

Then, a good half the staff don't realise these things are in the rules, so that those of us who are aware deal with the ridiculousness of it and others glide on by. But I can't in conscious glide on by when I know the rules. I was Chair of our School ethics committee for some years, literally the only person in my School with any ethics training at all, but eventually pulled out due to workload. Still feel slightly guilty at that, and also now hate submitting applications because our School is one that has very little knowledge.

Thanks for all your responses - it seems I am not the only one suffering! Unfortunately, there is no external ethics board in my field that students could go to.
What annoys me most perhaps, and that was also mentioned by some of you , is that reviews are so inconsistent. I had a PGR student last summer whose application I dreaded - working with children, multilingual families - it went through very smoothly with one round of amendments. The problematic one I am supporting now is really really uncomplex... and the reviewer is not only downright rude, he or she is also clearly from a different field who doesn't understand what the student is doing.
Inconsistency also in other things - why is there one set of consistent guidelines, PUBLISHED ON THE WEBSITE!!!, about what information to include in an online survey. Instead, some students are told to include their whole information sheet - which is never read, which means that consent is completely uninformed - whereas others are told to include a minimal version.
The whole process appears incredibly 'hostile' - there is no chance for discussion to come to a mutually agreeable solution. My own blood pressure goes up every time I get a response on an application.

And why, why does every institution have a different process? In some institutions, it seems quite light-touch... in a collaborative project, my collaborator had the response from their board back within a week, with a generally very light touch approach. My own board on the other hand....

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a UK-wide Ethics review board, all working to the same standards, with some professional reviewers and some 'lay ones'? Universities would have to pay into this board proportionally to their number of full-time research active-staff, or second their own staff proportionally. Just an idea!!!

You're all complaining about process for university ethics - try NHS ethics and feel the pain!