Two transsexual women who are featured in a controversial new book by the chairman of Northwestern University’s psychology department have filed complaints with the university, saying that the professor did not tell them that they were subjects of his research and did not get their consent as participants.
At issue is a book by J. Michael Bailey, The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism, which was published this year by the National Academies Press (The Chronicle, June 20).
“The book contains numerous observations and reports of interviews with me,” C. Anjelica Kieltyka, one of the transsexual women, wrote in a letter this month to C. Bradley Moore, Northwestern’s vice president for research. She added: “I did not receive, nor was I asked to sign, an informed-consent document.”
In her letter, Ms. Kieltyka wrote that she unwittingly became a “recruiter for research subjects” for Mr. Bailey. During the 1990s, she brought several men who wanted to get sex-change operations to Mr. Bailey’s office, where he agreed to sign the letters they needed to proceed with “sex reassignment” surgery.
After their surgeries, Ms. Kieltyka said in an interview last week, Mr. Bailey befriended the women, socializing with them at Chicago bars and even attending one of their weddings. Stories about several of the transsexual women then appeared in Mr. Bailey’s book, where they were identified by pseudonyms.
“At no time were any of us aware of our status with Dr. Bailey as research subjects,” wrote Ms. Kieltyka, who is called “Cher” in the book and agreed to allow The Chronicle to print her real name.
Another transsexual woman who wrote a letter of complaint to Northwestern this month provided a copy of it to The Chronicle on the condition that she remain anonymous. When she visited Mr. Bailey in 1998, she wrote, “my sole purpose ... was to obtain the most important Ph.D.-level letter for my surgery.” Mr. Bailey, she charged, is guilty of misconduct because of his “misuse of the [sex-reassignment] interviews as research.”
Was It Research?
Many transsexual women have harshly criticized Mr. Bailey’s book, saying it mischaracterizes their motives for changing their sex. The common medical diagnosis -- gender-identity disorder -- holds that men who want to become women are women trapped in men’s bodies. But Mr. Bailey writes that men who become women are really either extremely gay or sexual fetishists.
Under federal law, research universities must have institutional review boards that oversee all research involving human subjects. Even if a professor’s work is not financed with federal funds, Northwestern requires all research “involving the collection of data from human subjects” to be submitted for possible IRB scrutiny, according to guidelines posted on the university’s Web site.
The IRB determines whether a professor needs to obtain the informed consent of research subjects. That involves telling the subjects the purpose of the research, as well as its potential risks and benefits to them.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Bailey said he did not want to talk about the two women’s assertions. But in an e-mail message to The Chronicle, the professor wrote that he had “never considered Anjelica et al. research subjects.” He added: “I was writing about my own life experiences among transsexual women.”
The jacket of Mr. Bailey’s book, however, directly contradicts that statement. It says the work is “based on his original research” and is “grounded firmly in the scientific method.”
According to federal regulations, a human subject is someone from whom a researcher obtains data through “interaction,” which includes “communication or interpersonal contact between investigator and subject.”
As long as the identity of the subject is known to the researcher -- even though the researcher may not make the person’s identity public -- the participant may be considered a “human subject.”
William J. Skane, a spokesman for the National Academy of Sciences, which directs the National Academies Press, would not comment on the complaints.
A Northwestern spokesman said the university would “respond to the complaints using its established policies and procedures.”
Many scholars believe that IRB’s, which were originally established to oversee medical research, have overstepped their bounds. “My concern is the mission creep of IRB’s into the social sciences and even the humanities,” says Matthew Finkin, a professor of law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Mr. Finkin says that applying a biomedical model to other disciplines creates problems.
Joan C. Sieber, a professor of psychology at California State University at Hayward and an expert on how IRB’s operate, shares Mr. Finkin’s concerns. She says it sounds as if Mr. Bailey’s critics are using IRB regulations “as a tool” to attack him.
But, she says, Mr. Bailey should have let Northwestern decide whether his work constituted research, whether people like Ms. Kieltyka should have been considered “human subjects,” and whether he needed subjects’ consent. If he did not inform the IRB’s members of his project, the professor “is on very shaky ground,” says Ms. Sieber. “They should have made the determination.”
http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Volume 49, Issue 46, Page A10