The brave new world of research surveillance

Institutional review boards (IRBs) were created to review biomedical and psychological research involving demonstrable risk to human participants. During the past half decade, however, many campus IRBs have begun to review humanities and social science research, thereby substantially expanding their mission and effectively imposing on faculty moral and ethical standards inappropriate to historical research. Moreover IRBs have traditionally reviewed research plans, not potential publications. But the only way for IRBs to guarantee adherence to their standards for human conduct campuswide would be to exercise prior restraint on publication. That would seriously undermine academic freedom.