{"title":"Scientific Ritual: The Institutional Review Boards for Human Clinical Trials in Israel.","authors":"Hedva Eyal","doi":"10.1111/maq.70028","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This ethnographic study analyzes Israeli Institutional Review Boards (IRBs') main practices and discourses. I describe IRB operations as bureaucratic rituals derived from idealized scientific values, with physician-scientist members serving as gatekeepers who perform boundary work to preserve professional independence. The findings show how temporal-spatial bureaucratic rituals separate scientists from nonscientists across different phases of the review process and limit ethical and scientific discussions within the IRBs that authorize clinical trials. The scientific discourse is constrained to administrative compliance, and ethical discourse is reduced to procedural form-checking. The work of IRBs thus redefines the relationship between bioscience and society as a hierarchical rather than a shared system, thereby preserving the myth of science as beyond external scrutiny and maintaining scientific autonomy despite IRBs' formal role as boundary organizations.</p>","PeriodicalId":47649,"journal":{"name":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","volume":" ","pages":"e70028"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Medical Anthropology Quarterly","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.70028","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This ethnographic study analyzes Israeli Institutional Review Boards (IRBs') main practices and discourses. I describe IRB operations as bureaucratic rituals derived from idealized scientific values, with physician-scientist members serving as gatekeepers who perform boundary work to preserve professional independence. The findings show how temporal-spatial bureaucratic rituals separate scientists from nonscientists across different phases of the review process and limit ethical and scientific discussions within the IRBs that authorize clinical trials. The scientific discourse is constrained to administrative compliance, and ethical discourse is reduced to procedural form-checking. The work of IRBs thus redefines the relationship between bioscience and society as a hierarchical rather than a shared system, thereby preserving the myth of science as beyond external scrutiny and maintaining scientific autonomy despite IRBs' formal role as boundary organizations.
期刊介绍：
Medical Anthropology Quarterly: International Journal for the Analysis of Health publishes research and theory in the field of medical anthropology. This broad field views all inquiries into health and disease in human individuals and populations from the holistic and cross-cultural perspective distinctive of anthropology as a discipline -- that is, with an awareness of species" biological, cultural, linguistic, and historical uniformity and variation. It encompasses studies of ethnomedicine, epidemiology, maternal and child health, population, nutrition, human development in relation to health and disease, health-care providers and services, public health, health policy, and the language and speech of health and health care.
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