Educational Resources

Steve Simon

2004-02-03

Someone posed a question on the IRB Discussion forum wondering if there was a source of free materials “that we can email or distribute as hardcopy to our study coordinators and other research staff to help them keep up to date on issues relevant to human subjects research.”

There' a lot of good stuff on the web, I wrote back, but you have to live with uneven quality, partisan viewpoints, and there is no one to collate and synthesize the results. But then I thought that maybe I could do this. So as I have time, I’ll highlight some of the interesting developments and controversies in research and provide links to free sources of information on the web. Here are some examples of sources that I will draw on.

There are many more resources, of course. Send me an email if you have a favorite.

An additional educational resource

Someone else on the IRB Forum listed a nice educational resource from Illuminata. This web site lists recent news stories about research controversies, such as a February 1, 2004 report about a lawsuit from the families of five patients who died in a controversial medical experiment. The web site describes Illuminata as “a Seattle-based education and information services company, providing services and resources in the areas of human subjects research, ethics, and genetics. We support IRB professionals, research teams and others through identifying their information and education requirements and developing tailored products and services to meet their needs.

You can find an earlier version of this page on my original website.