Can Research Ethics Boards be safety nets?
In any case, Rosanna said, her sub-project proposal was developed and submitted to the designated REB at the academic institution where her project was located in North America. REBs in this part of the world are quite sophisticated when it comes to infrastructure, human resources allocation and overall resource allocation at an institutional level to run them. Nonetheless, there is no reason to believe that they are without constraints. Rosanna’s frustration at this stage was at two levels. First, the research protocol that the team had prepared was not to her satisfaction for a number of reasons, the most important being that the team did not adequately develop the justification for focusing attention on an in-depth, multi-centric, international research study. Second, she therefore anticipated that the REB would raise questions on this seminal aspect of the research. However, to her surprise other than asking for some minor clarifications, the REB approved it at one sitting. So her
