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Institutional review boards (IRBs) governing social and behavioral research seem to systematically exceed the guidelines established by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. We examine a clandestine study of prostitution and another of employment discrimination and conclude that IRBs, more concerned about being sued than they are about protecting research subjects, get in the way of science and cause ethical problems as a consequence. We discuss the ethical principles involved and call for a suspension of all IRB review in the social and behavioral sciences.Most covert research strategies raise ethical concerns that Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) tend to ignore in their zeal to protect universities from lawsuits. We begin with a clandestine study of prostitution (Galliher and Donnell-Watson 2003) and an employment discrimination study (Pager and Quillian 2005) and in a subsequent book (Pager 2007) review IRB actions regarding what appear to be important ethical concerns for social science research, discuss the philosophical principles behind those concerns, analyze how IRBs have gone wrong, and propose a major change in the way social sciences do business with IRBs. Specifically, we argue that audit researchers should follow the Least Harm ethical principle (Mill

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