A bitter whinge about research ethics boards - anyone else?

[Catabogus]

Sorry this is just going to be a rant. Is it me or are ethics review boards getting worse? I swear they exist basically to prevent research being done.

I have just had my second research ethics clearance application rejected in 2 months (in social sciences). This one is to start a project that is externally funded, all booked, overseas and extremely time sensitive. The method is basically just a small longitudinal survey.

It came back today with a big old “reject”! There are over 20 comments about the ways in which it’s problematic.

I am a pretty experienced researcher who has been doing this kind of survey in the relevant countries for 15 years. I submitted an almost identical research application 3 years ago (exactly the same project design, just to be carried out in a different, neighbouring country) which was approved with no issue - indeed the comment from the reviewer then said the ethics strategy was extremely well thought-out.

So if this application now is horribly unethical, you would think we must certainly have been doing something dreadfully wrong in <neighbouring country> for the last 3 years too, surely?? Should I immediately call that project off? I mean, I get that there must have been a different reviewer on that application, but it can’t be meant to be so variable, can it?

I can’t avoid the (probably unfair) sense that the ethics panels are now mainly staffed by very inexperienced researchers who are determined to find problems where none exist. Some of the “problems” they identify don’t even have any obvious ethical relevance - eg that a different kind of new-fangled survey might be better, or that I haven’t included a particular area of [non-ethics-related] literature in my overview. How is this within their remit?

is it just me? Anyone else find this? It would be good to know I’m not alone in thinking something has gone very wrong with this process somewhere.

Edited to remove auto-correct!

If you bother to read the threads or even my previous post on this one you'll see that the whole of Mumsnet was scraped without MNHQ's consent, in violation of site ToS, and used for forensic linguistics by two (male) researchers who mentioned in their conference presentation the distinctive language used by women undergoing fertility treatment.

The data theft is not just a data protection crime against FWR, it's a crime against every user of Mumsnet.

As an aside, if you do not recognise that ethics apply even to the people you don't like, I urge you to leave research and medicine because you are a hazard to your research subjects and patients. (Inferring your roles from your username.)

If the design of the research is incorrect then that does pose ethical issues. Participants' time should not be wasted by participating in a badly designed project. Yes, supervisors or the researchers should have checked this but that doesn’t always happen. Honestly, some of the applications are not good at all. The REC is usually the last place prior to approval so someone needs to ensure that the research has been properly designed.

@hauckcat - I agree, badly designed studies are problematic in that sense. But that's not really what I'm talking about. It was more discussions of which methodology applicants should use, or what sample groups, which were more a matter of preference than quality necessarily.

I had this in my last place, drove me mad. Basically the ethical approval turned into 'are you doing the research I'd do the way I'd do it' which is so far from what ethics should actually be about.

Yes. That is so annoying. And it all depends on who you get reviewing. Some do a great job, others nit pick and go way beyond their remit. No, really, I do not need to include an exhaustive literature review detailing the background to my study in order for you to determine whether there are ethical issues in my study looking at the effectiveness of a particular piece of very uncontroversial teaching software. The only reason I'm doing the study was because it was the only way I could get the software funded.