Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This ethnographic study analyzes Israeli Institutional Review Boards (IRBs') main practices and discourses. I describe IRB operations as bureaucratic rituals derived from idealized scientific values, with physician-scientist members serving as gatekeepers who perform boundary work to preserve professional independence. The findings show how temporal-spatial bureaucratic rituals separate scientists from nonscientists across different phases of the review process and limit ethical and scientific discussions within the IRBs that authorize clinical trials. The scientific discourse is constrained to administrative compliance, and ethical discourse is reduced to procedural form-checking. The work of IRBs thus redefines the relationship between bioscience and society as a hierarchical rather than a shared system, thereby preserving the myth of science as beyond external scrutiny and maintaining scientific autonomy despite IRBs' formal role as boundary organizations.
Source: Medical Anthropology Quarterly
DOI: 10.1111/maq.70028
Author: Hedva Eyal
Institution: Tel Hai Academic College
Language: English
Topic: Ethics in Clinical Research
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,400
OpenAlex ID: W4415353085