“Beneficence” and Its Discontents: A Call to Revisit the Role of the IRB in Social and Political Science Research

Social and political scientists have long criticized institutional ethics review; however, scholars continue to suggest that the system can be reformed to achieve more ethical outcomes. This article argues that such aspirations are misguided. This is because, unlike in biomedical and clinical studies, the social sciences refuse a shared account of ultimate benefits and harms. Instead, these disciplines are defined in part by critical inquiry into what constitutes social harm and benefit, such that risks and benefits are indeterminate. Situated in relation to scholarship on inconsistency in institutional ethics review, this article analyzes arguments defending and condemning the ethical merit of four real-world ethical controversies in the social and political sciences to demonstrate the nonresolvable nature of this indeterminacy. Decisions of ethics review committees therefore cannot be said to unequivocally raise the ethical bar of research practice; instead, they reflect socially bound and contingent views of reviewers and institutions. This may still be desirable, but suggests a need to limit the authority of ethics review to legitimize social and political sciences on ethical grounds, and to critically assess the trade-offs of continued investment in this system.