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Entry: Short course in ethics
An act is not speech, any more than I could shoot someone in the head, and then by the magic words of calling it "art" have it no longer be murder. I'm now convinced this is all a hoax: if Shvarts had truly repeatedly induced miscarriage like that, she'd be in the hospital, and I'm sure the adoring parents of such a "gifted," precocious, talented blah blah blah child would be shrieking at the top of their lungs and calling legions of the plaintiffs' bar out of the woodwork.
Posted by Dave J at April 18, 2008 10:44 PM
I would guess the IRB had no jurisdiction. Art is not research (although it may be scholarship). Research is defined for IRB purposes as "a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge".
Posted by hypatia cade at April 21, 2008 4:34 AM
Was this a research project? At my old university, I thought a student needed to see the IRB for her art project, and she was told that she didn't because it was an art project, not a research project even though she was creating it for display.
Posted by Nels at April 21, 2008 6:39 AM
Many IRBs routinely exempt various disciplines from their purview. One discipline so exempted is journalism. A journalism student can do a project involving research on a particular subject in the context of publishing results as an article in the student newspaper; a sociology student doing the exact same project would not be exempt since such research would be considered social science research employing human subjects. Art is also exempt; many students "employ" nude models as part of their art projects and said models are human subjects, but IRBs are not interested.
Restraint on the Yale student could have been excercised by the supervising prof, but such did not occur.
Posted by barry m. dank at April 21, 2008 9:48 PM