Weaponizing the IRB 2.0

Personal Experiences

In this essay, co-written with Nate Honeycutt, we describe our Kafka-esque experiences with the Rutgers Institutional Review Board (IRB). It is a companion essay to the issues raised in How Institutional Review Boards can be (and are) Weaponized Against Academic Freedom, a report by University of Redlands researchers, Jessica Hehman and Catherine Salmon. The mission of IRBs is, supposedly, to ensure that researchers do not mistreat participants, a goal both laudable and necessary, especially for biomedical research. But we do not engage in biomedical research, and, in this essay, we describe our experiences with an IRB that has overstepped its original mission in ways harmful to research.

Trial by Fire, Peter Lely, circa 1650, via Wikimedia Commons

Background: Questionnaire Studies, in General

From 2016 to 2022, while Nate was Lee’s graduate student, we collaborated on many projects, including some surveys of higher education faculty (this was also the subject of Nathan’s PhD dissertation; essays based on this can be found at Unsafe Science, such as this report, based on Nate’s dissertation, regarding the implementation of DEI and this on the radicalization of the faculty). Some of our questionnaires were designed to measure the political climate on campus; others included measures of left-wing authoritarianism.

When psychologists conduct a survey, they usually give the participants a general sense of what their study is about and request their consent to participate. Researchers often keep their descriptions vague on purpose, to avoid biasing the responses. For example, a study assessing prejudice and stereotypes might say, in its consent form, something like, “We are assessing people’s beliefs about and attitudes towards a variety of groups.” It won’t say “We are conducting a survey to see how bigoted you are against [group].” A study assessing belief in conspiracy theories might inform particpants that they will receive a questionnaire assessing their “beliefs about election integrity”; it won’t usually state “we are assessing your beliefs that a vast leftwing conspiracy stole the election from Donald Trump in 2020” or “your beliefs that a vast rightwing conspiracy stole the election from Hillary Clinton in 2016.” That said, it isn’t always possible to disguise a study’s purpose. That we were studying aspects of the political atmosphere on campus, and of the far left and its dysfunctions, may have been apparent to some respondents.

The Trials of Nate and Lee

In 2022, we were subjected to three separate audits of our work initiated by the Rutgers Institutional Review Board. These also involved an outside investigator appointed by the Rutgers IRB, who was charged with performing a “for-cause” review of our research. As we understand it, “for-cause” means that the IRB received at least one complaint about the study. We were told the audits would entail reviewing the studies to see whether any ethics violations had occurred.

When IRBs do Their Job Right

All colleges and universities that conduct research on human or animal subjects have an IRB. Typically, it takes the form of a committee made up of seasoned scholars. The committee reviews all research proposals that involve human or animal subjects to ensure that the research is conducted in an ethical manner, in accordance with certain policies and procedures, and in a way that minimizes harm to participants. By “ethical,” they mean things like not mistreating participants and obtaining their consent to participate. At larger institutions like Rutgers, IRBs have paid staff who help review submissions. Given that studies are pre-vetted in this way, it is unusual for a study that has already been conducted to be audited and extremely unusual for outside investigators to be called in.

When IRBs Overstep Their Mission: The Audits

The first audit caught us by surprise and the IRB kept us in the dark about the precise nature of the complaint or complaints that had been lodged against us. But we willingly complied. We had nothing to hide because we had done everything by the book.

When we received the news that we were being audited a second time, for a completely different study, warning bells went off. And when we learned of a third audit, that yet another of our studies was being audited, they began to peal loudly. It certainly seemed as if someone had weaponized the Rutgers IRB against us. Of course, we can’t know this for certain. But there are good reasons to suspect it.

The IRB, we later discovered, had received some bizarre complaints about the scientific validity of our survey designs, and had been told that our survey questions were “biased,” “offensive,” and being used to “draw conclusions or to support a political agenda.” We were never told who made these complaints. Complainants can submit their objections to the IRB anonymously. Alternatively, the IRB can hide complainants’ identities from the researchers concerned. Furthermore, we were never told which of our survey questions were deemed biased or offensive.

Surveys With “Biased” or Even “Offensive” Questions are 100% Legitimate and Constitute No Ethics Violation Whatsoever

At Rutgers, formal complaints such as these always trigger a full investigation.  We were repeatedly told this was required — there was nothing anyone in the Rutgers IRB system could do to prevent it. Nonetheless, when we asked to see the source of such a rule — which we did repeatedly — we received nothing.

This is ridiculous. First, if it is a mandated rule, they should be able to show us the mandate. Even if there is some rule, even if Congress passed legislation declaring “All complaints about research must be investigated” (which they haven’t), someone should be able to show us the rule. If Rutgers President mandated “all complaints must be investigated,” they should be able to show us the mandate.

Second, it is ridiculous because complaints like the ones we received should be dismissed out of hand. Asking “biased” or “offensive” questions does not constitute an ethics violation. Researchers have every right to ask such questions—indeed, sometimes, it is unavoidable. For example, some of the most trusted and widely used measures of political extremism are inherently “biased” precisely because they’re designed to measure endorsement of extremist beliefs. Prejudice questionnaires sometimes assess agreement with repulsive beliefs about groups. The social sciences are filled with questionnaires assessing people’s endorsement of bizarre conspiracy theories and willingness to condone political violence. As well they should be.

All our study participants had signed a consent form before participating. None of our participants were coerced into answering any question; if they found a question offensive, they were free to skip it or decline to complete the questionnaire. This is how you treat adults — if they do not wish to answer a question, they cannot be compelled to do so; if they consent to answering questions THE END — no Big Brother Bureaucracy needed to “intervene” to “ensure ethics.” In any case, given that the entire questionnaire had already been approved and deemed ethical by the IRB, complaints about the nature of the questions we asked should have been simply ignored.

Show Me the Off Ramp

Here is the demented thing about this process: There is no off ramp. For example, in the U.S. anyone can sue anyone else for pretty much anything. I can sue you for coloring your hair purple. But this does not mean you need to spend years in court defending yourself against the “charge” of coloring your hair. There is an off ramp. Such a suit would be instantaneously thrown out of court as frivolous. I can sue, but it would be go nowhere, fast.

The Massacre of the Innocents, 1638, Rubens, via Wikimedia

There is nothing like an IRB ruling that a complaint about a study is frivolous, at least not with Rutgers’ IRB. Over my long career (Lee writing here), I have pissed people in academia off for all sorts of things — especially for rejecting sacred cows and ringing alarms about the politicization of academia and the way it corrupts peer review. Such people, if savvy enough, can weaponize frivolous IRB complaints to essentially harass me and my students.

Back to Our Trials

Siege of Antioch, circa 1474, Sébastien Mamerot, via Wikimedia Commons

However, there is currently no off ramp, so we were “investigated.” The outside investigators required us to produce documentation of every single aspect of each of the three projects: all our data, research protocol documents, informed consent forms, recruitment materials, survey instruments and questionnaires, data analysis materials, records of all communications with the IRB, and with participants, on any topic whatsoever. They even asked us to create explainer documents to accompany some of the material. Studies of this kind generate a lot of paperwork. Over the course of the three audits, we had to produce over 3,000 pages of supporting documentation.

Then there were interminable phone calls. We spent more than five hours in meetings. All in all, the audits took nearly 6 months—from February to July 2022. And all these hours of effort in the service of mind-numbing bureaucratic tedium served no constructive purpose that we could ascertain. The auditors themselves were always cordial. It wasn’t their fault; they were simply complying with a mandate from the Rutgers IRB. But why had the IRB singled us out in this way? Was the university looking for an excuse to nail us to the wall? Or was the IRB bureaucracy simply following its own internal rules? It hardly mattered. The upshot was the same: a horrendous waste of time and effort.

None of the investigations turned up anything at all. Each time, the auditor reported that, “there were no regulatory findings discovered during this review, as the study followed the approved protocol.” After six months under the microscope, we thought the ordeal was finally over. It was not.

Innocent Yet Still Punished

Even though we had a received a clean bill of health from each of the three auditors, the Rutgers IRB was still not satisfied. The IRB initiated a review to evaluate the validity of the design and methodology of one of our studies (a design and methodology they had previously approved). In addition, they changed the status of our projects from “exempt” to “expedited”—in plain English, this meant that we would be subjected to mandatory annual IRB reviews. Despite our repeated requests, no IRB staff ever provided any explantion for these penalties.

Given that we had been vindicated by all three audits, we should have been in the clear. In fact, rather than penalizing us further, the IRB brass should have apologized for wasting our time. But the IRB at Rutgers is granted wide latitude to regulate research, and faculty subjected to its capricious rulings have no recourse but appeal to a higher university authority, such as a provost or president. We did not appeal because of the further time and effort that would have taken and the slim chances of success.

It is bizarre that the Rutgers IRB has no mechanism allowing them to dismiss frivolous complaints out of hand. To this day, it is unclear what we were thought to be guilty of—beyond conducting research that some participants didn’t like. The system is clearly easily gameable by malevolent actors with vindictive motives. If we had not kept meticulous records of our research, our projects might have been shut down because of a technicality, even if we had done nothing wrong.

Those filing the complaints had nothing to lose since there is no way of punishing people for making timewasting or spurious allegations. On the other hand, we had everything to lose. An unsuccessful audit would have jeopardized our current and future research projects and Nathan’s ability to complete his PhD, and could have stymied our academic careers.   

Although we were cleared by the auditors, the costs to us were substantial. We lost countless hours that could have been spent on other research projects, on getting papers published in academic journals—or on literally anything else. Not to mention the six months of extreme anxiety and stress. From what we have heard from colleagues, our experiences were not unique.

IRBs Can Ensure Research Does no Harm Without Infringing on Academic Freedom

IRBs were originally designed to ensure the ethical treatment of research participants. They have an important role to play since researchers should not be allowed to do harmful or risky things to participants without their consent. But, with rare exceptions, they are irrelevant to the type of social science research that we conduct, which mainly involves asking participants to fill out online questionnaires. It would be nearly impossible for us to cause participants any real harm through our surveys (though an offensive or poorly worded question can certainly be annoying, no one is ever compelled to answer it).

When an IRB exceeds its mandate by punishing or investigating (which is its own punishment) professors and students for legitimate research, it is a clear violation of academic freedom. But until there is some way of reining in runaway IRB investigations, nothing is likely to change. Indeed, we suspect things will only get worse.

Academic freedom is necessary to permit researchers to study what they are interested in using methods they believe in, as long as they receive consent from competent consenting adults, especially for research that merely involves reading and answering questions. There may be some extreme exceptions for irresponsible research that might cause death or serious impairment, but, even if so, this should have no relevance to anything ever assessed in research that involves nothing more than instructions and survey questions. Such research should be beyond the jurisdiction of academic bureaucracies.

It is also vital to provide an off-ramp for IRBs, a system that allows them to summarily dismiss frivolous complaints, without having to subject researchers to length investigations. Neither of these things would be hard to implement, if the will were there.

Dear Rutgers IRB,

We have no idea why you have instigated these dysfunctional procedures. Perhaps you believe they are necessary because of some sort of external reason. For example, perhaps there are federal rules requiring extensive bureaucratic “investigations” “whenever” there is a complaint. Even if so, which we doubt, but even if so, you have to follow federal rules for federally funded grants. The feds do not mandate your procedures for anything other than federally funded grants. You do not need to follow those rules when research, such as ours which was not federally funded, is conducted.

Please create an off ramp. Spurious complaints, such as those described here, should be ignored or dismissed immediately upon reception.