Yesterday I attended an IRB 101 workshop offered by Primr in Durham, NC. The goal of the workshop was to orient folks new to the IRB process to the issues and concerns of research approval and adminstration. While there were many interesting things in the workshop, perhaps the most interesting part for me was the discussion about internet research policies. There was a rich discussion about how the internet challenges issues of perceived privacy, anonymous identity, and data security (among a whole host of other topics)! There was discussion of an early internet-based research project which had the effect of destablizing the community it studied in part due to the fact that the researcher published enough information about the participants so that they were readily identified.
