An Institutional Review Board On The Ethics of the Thesis Study in Candyman (1992)
Written by Victoria Dickman-Burnett and Tony Barrett
Re: Violations
UIC IRB 1990–32423
The Origin of Urban Legends Among College Students
The Institutional Review Board has reviewed your project’s current status at its meeting on October 6, 1992.
Suffice it to say, it did not take careful inspection and deliberation for the IRB to determine that its concerns over research integrity and subject safety were disregarded. The research performed in your study did not meet the standards set forth by the laws of nature, federal laws, and University policies that set the standard for human subject safety.
Ms. Lyle, your disregard for the psychological and physical risks in this study has transcended the IRB’s standards, by creating new standards and dimensions that will shape policy for years to come.
Our notes and concerns are listed below:
1. Engaging Participants in the Study Outside of the Defined Population:
Your study protocol clearly stated that you would be interviewing first year students enrolled in this institution. Interviewing members of the custodial staff and seeking out further interviewees among the residence of Cabrini-Green is a clear violation of your outlined procedures. One of your interviewees at Cabrini-Green was a child and thus could not consent to participate in your study. This would be a time to follow established protocol in obtaining consent from a parent or guardian, and this was not followed.
Ms. Lyle, we are also aware of unauthorized changes to the first year sociology curriculum by your husband. They are minor, but have compromised your study by exposing the respondent pool to the myth before you have finished collecting data. Now, while we held Dr. Lyle in the highest regard and supported his instructional design — this is a shortfall that has hindered the integrity of the study. We are unsure of how both of you, with your familiarity of procedures, could have failed this check.
If you need to change the focus of your study, the proper way to do this is to file an amendment to your protocol with the IRB office.
2. Failure to Follow Informed Consent Procedures:
We have been made aware of your decision to interview and record members of the custodial staff without receiving signed consent to be included in your research or approval of the voice recording. Signed permission is required for both study participation and recording to ensure that participants have not been coerced into study involvement.
There is also the matter that interviewing custodial staff at their place of work without any established protocol for how their identities will be protected is, in the opinion of this board, coercive research.
Furthermore, our investigation shows that your consent procedures in Cabrini-Green were nonexistent bordering on criminal negligence. Breaking and entering is not a charge we typically have to discuss in an IRB meeting, but we have made history for this meeting. This is all especially galling when you consider that several of your participants are deemed to be members of vulnerable populations — as well as some that are children.
3. Placing Participants in Unnecessary Danger:
Throughout your unauthorized study at Cabrini-Green, your behavior repeatedly put both participants of the study and other community members — the distinction between the two being almost completely blurred due to your poor informed consent procedures — in danger.
While we dispute the existence of the urban legend you refer to as ‘Candyman,’ Ms. Lyle, your willingness to summon this entity with little regard around you is troubling. Even more troubling is the fact that over the course of your time at Cabrini-Green you put a child in direct contact with known gang members. Your actions there led to the disappearance, as well as severe endangerment of an infant. While you did ultimately recover said infant, the research getting to that point is inexcusable.
4. Additional Matters:
We are also aware that you have expressed concerns about the inappropriate nature of your husband’s behavior toward some of his female undergraduate students. This is not the purview of the IRB, as it does not concern research ethics. We would consider forwarding these concerns to the proper channels, but as he is no longer with the University no further action can be taken. We must note that we do find his actions abhorrent, but do not agree with your actions nor can we consider them in the board’s decision of how to proceed with this case.
We also wanted to note that while your IRB protocol lists a Co-Principal Investigator, one Ms. Bernadette Walsh, her current status of deceased does put you as the sole subject of inquiry in this investigation. It should go without saying, Ms. Lyle, that your alleged involvement in her death — whether by your direct or indirect (via ‘Candyman’) — nullifies her responsibilities within the oversight of this board.
In addition, it is generally frowned upon to become the subject of a research study. This unfortunately adds a layer of complexity, as it makes an inherent conflict of interest when the researcher is also the researched. The bias derived from this conflict can and will drive a study to be well outside the bounds of ethical standards.
5. In summary:
Your lack of research ethics has led to a series of events with dire consequences, including: several deaths, the endangerment of children and infants, the breaking of the bounds between the natural and supernatural, as well as opening the University up to liability. The board will nonetheless continue to investigate the case fully to reach a proper decision on the matter. We do anticipate finding you in violation of your IRB protocol and culpable for exposing your research participants to undue and unnecessary risk.
Sincerely,
The Institutional Review Board-Human Research Protections
University of Illinois At Chicago
10–13–1992
P.S. As we currently have no address on file as you no longer maintain a legal residence, and we do not have the budget or the methods to reliably find you, we will be requesting your presence with one final invocation of your name — Ms. Lyle.
