federal oversight of oral history in flux

The Department of Health and Human Services is in the process of revising its guidelines for the operation of Institutional Review Boards, the apparatus for overseeing research involving human subjects. IRBs originated in the 1970s in an attempt to regulate human subject research and curb abuses such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment in which patients were treated as test subjects in a study on the progression of the disease -- without their knowledge or consent.  Since the mid-1990s, the IRBs have increasingly insisted on oversight of oral historical research, a process that bears little resemblance to the type of medical, psychological, or even social science research. I, myself, went through the review process in order to conduct my interviews with Oregon Extension alums. I had the good fortune to work with an IRB panel that was knowledgeable about oral historical practices, and found the process a fairly painless and at times even useful one. It gave me a chance to clarify my methodology and justify my practices with theory. Not all oral historians, however, have been so lucky.

The revision of the rules governing research involving human subjects offers historians the opportunity to advocate for improved guidelines that would correct this square-peg-in-a-round-hole situation. The preliminary findings of the working group, however, also indicate that new rules may bring with them new dilemmas. In particular, many historians are concerned that the guidelines create a false division between scientific research ("real" research) and humanities research (not-real research), a move that implies the work that oral historians do is less than professional. As Robert B. Townsend wrote in the September issue of Perspectives:

In 2004, the AHA and Oral History Association worked with HHS on the formulation proposed here (that history does not constitute “research that creates generalizable knowledge”). Unfortunately, the argument prompted some derision from outside the field, from academics who interpreted the phrase to say simply “history is not research.” (As a case in point, the vice president for research at my own university, after a fairly contentious meeting on the subject, wished me well on my “;non-research dissertation.”)

We also received a number of complaints from within the discipline. Some historians argue that history does contribute generalizable knowledge, even if it bears little resemblance to the scientific definition of the word. And faculty members at history of medicine departments and in the social science side of history warned that this position undermined both their institutional standing and their ability to obtain grants. They made it clear that however finely worded, stating that history did not constitute research in even the most bureaucratic terms could have some real financial costs to the discipline.

The American Historical Association has put together a list of "talking points" concerning the proposed changes, if you are interested in the in-a-nutshell version of their concerns.