Inside Higher Ed is running a piece asking “Are IRBs needed in war zones?”:http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/22/anthro which draws heavily from Strong’s important post on “Human Terrain’s apparent lack of IRB oversight”:/2007/10/18/human-terrain-and-the-irb-puzzle/.

As Strong notes, the issues raised by IRB clearance in Iraq raise include not only the role of IRB in research, but the relationship between academic anthropology and ‘applied work’ in the context of the changing labor market for Ph.D.s. Indeed, one of the first comments on the IHE article questions whether IRBs are necessary at all, and Marcus Griffin is quoted in the article as saying that “there isn’t sufficient work accomplished from which to form a position regarding ethics”.

Let’s take some of these issues in order: first is the basic question of whether IRBs are needed at all. This is an important debate, I suppose, especially given the fact that it might now be used to ally a ‘pure ivory’ view of academic freedom (associated with left-liberal cloistered intellectuals) as well as the most ‘applied’ version of anthropology — the kind that goes to war (often associated with right-wing, anti-oversight positions).

But regardless of how that particular alignment of interests pans out the fact is that, for better or worse, we now have IRB procedures. And as far as I can tell DoD and University procedures require that people undertake them. If we agree that they require an IRB then things really look bleak for anthropologists at war trying to take the moral high ground who have not been through them. Griffin’s attempt to split the difference by arguing that “it’s too soon” to tell what the ethics of anthropology at war are is, in my opinion, unsuccessful in this regard.

He has a point that many of the questions about anthropology at war are difficult to answer because we don’t have enough data — is anthropology efficacious, for instance (something I have considered at length “elsewhere”:/2007/10/17/efficacy-issues/)?The answers hinge not only on his conduct, but the larger sociological currents in which he is caught up — a ‘successful’ resolution to the war in Iraq will make everyone look good, for instance. But this is a separate (albeit related) question from the morality of participation in the war. Is Griffin claiming that he does not yet know whether he is doing the right thing? If so (and it might be the quote is misleading) this represents back-peddling from his previous position, which was to stand up and be counted in favor of the morality of anthropology at war, even if such a position was unpopular. His university’s own unwillingness to address the issue publicly does not inspire confidence either.

And all of these issues are separate from the real issue raised by the article — if IRBs exist and if they are necessary for researchers like Griffin then the question becomes inescapable: have these people been through an IRB or not? I have never met a soldier who liked regulations — not my students at Pearl Harbor, not my friends retired from the service, not my buddy who has done two tours in Iraq. But all of them still follow the rules. Indeed, the military socializes people to cope with all the regulations by complaining about them. We all take shortcuts, expedite processes, and file for exemptions from time to time. But this is very different from leaving for the field without having obtained basic human rights clearance. Especially when the field is Iraq. This is a criticism that cannot be dismissed as leftist folly by anyone who take their duty seriously.