by Elisa A. Hurley, PhD, Executive Director
Much has been written in the past few months—pro and con—about the results of the Facebook emotional contagion study published in June in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study manipulated the News Feeds of 700,000 unknowing Facebook users for a week in January 2012 by adjusting Facebook’s existing algorithm to over-select for either more positive or more negative language in posts. At the end of the week, [...] Read more
by Meghan Timmel, Communications Coordinator
I recently heard PRIM&R’s annual Advancing Ethical Research (AER) Conference described by a member as the “three days a year where I don’t have to explain what I do for a living.” This sentiment is echoed by many in attendance at our annual conference, which provides all those involved with research ethics and [...] Read more
by Megan Frame, Membership Coordinator
Welcome to another installment of our featured member interviews where we introduce you to our members—individuals who work to advance ethical research on a daily basis. Please read on to learn more about their professional experiences, how membership helps connect them to a larger community, and what goes on behind-the-scenes in their lives!
Today we’d like to introduce you to Steven “Steve” O’Geary, assistant vice president [...] Read more
by Meryn Robinson, Educational Program Intern
When reviewing a study that sought to investigate how sex offenders used networked technologies and communications for human trafficking, Hila Berger, MPH, CIP, and her colleagues on the IRB at Montclair State University faced a unique challenge: balancing protections for the study’s subjects—sex offenders—against protections for potential victims. The potential for subjects to incriminate themselves and potential legal obligations related to information disclosed during the research further complicated the protocol review. To overcome these challenges, the IRB and legal counsel worked together to implement additional protections for the group.
Read more
by Holly Fernandez Lynch, JD, MBioethics, Executive Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics
The current framework for the regulation of human subjects research emerged largely in reaction to the horrors of Nazi human experimentation, revealed at the Nuremburg trials, and the US Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, conducted by US government researchers from 1932 to 1972. This [...] Read more
