Ethical Imperialism is a remarkable accomplishment and a must-read for researchers and policy makers. It persuasively weaves together the scholarly, disciplinary, regulatory, and bureaucratic strands that account for today's 'omnipresent threat' to social research. Canadian Journal of Sociology This book ought to be required reading for those concerned about the political forces that make our work possible, and sometimes not possible at all.
Susan B. Reverby American Historical Review [A]n impressive assessment of IRBs, from their tenuous beginnings in the early 1960s as a practical response to a perceived threat to the public from medical research to [their] present status as a threat to academic freedom in the social sciences... [A] significant contribution to those oral historians and related practitioners who would seek to challenge IRB's right and ability to adequately evaluate their research projects, particularly before the research has been conducted. Oral History Review A valuable contribution to the history of federal science policy and a useful critique of a system ill-suited to the uses to which it is being put. Journal of American History The book is a powerful indictment of the IRB regime. Law and Politics Book Review Exhaustively researched, drawing on... a wide array of sources.
Donald N. Bersoff PsycCRITIQUES Thoroughly researched story of how IRBs came to be, how they came to adopt rules designed for medical, biological, and psychological researchers and then to apply them to the social sciences, how those rules became institutionalized, and how the rules protect universities rather than the people who serve as subjects and informants in social science research. Contemporary Sociology I highly recommended this book for its contribution to the discussion of academic freedom, social science research, and the regulation of research ethics.
Ellen Marakowitz AAUP: Regulated Research