The Paradoxical Problem with Multiple-IRB Review

Abstract

The federal system for protecting research subjects was designed decades ago, when most research studies took place at a single institution. These days, if a study is conducted at multiple sites, an ethics review by an institutional review board (IRB) may be repeated many times. This practice has been criticized for both wasting resources and leading to inappropriate delays in the conduct of research.¹ One might suppose that this resource-intensive effort at least substantially improves the ethical integrity of multisite studies. In fact, however, there is reason to believe that not only do these duplicative reviews provide relatively few benefits, . . .