ArticleMedical anthropology quarterly2026
Scientific Ritual: The Institutional Review Boards for Human Clinical Trials in Israel.
Article in Medical anthropology quarterly, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Authors and funding
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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.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.