Political intervention in scientific peer review: Research on adolescent sexual behavior.

Abstract

In 1991, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) rescinded funding for a survey of adolescent health risk-taking behavior. The decision overturned a series of scientific and ethical peer and administrative reviews of the research, which had been chosen in a competitive evaluation of proposals to advance knowledge about the prevention of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and other diseases. The cancellation, coupled with congressional action to block similar research, left a gap in scientific data about adolescent health risk-taking. The cancellation may also encourage the further use of political criteria in evaluating proposals for scientific research. Procedures for funding scientific research should be reformed to protect peer review from arbitrary political intervention. Through a discussion of this decision and its consequences for AIDS prevention research, principles that justify autonomous peer review are clarified and a reform that could strengthen it is discussed.

Normative Sexuality Development in Adolescence: A Decade in Review, 2000–2009

“…We have fronted a relatively small body of the last decade's research on adolescent sexuality; it remains the case that a great deal of research in this area is organized around assumptions that adolescent sexual risk should be the focus of inquiry and intervention. Researchers are not immune to social, funding, and professional pressures and are still often asked by peer reviewers (and even sometimes required) to limit their research questions to those involving sexual risk assessment (Collins, 2003;Gardner & Wilcox, 1993). We are hopeful that identifying that there is a critical mass of research on normative adolescent sexuality development will encourage researchers to ask the questions that emerge from this perspective.…”

Impact of Asking Sensitive Questions about Violence to Children and Adolescents

“…Because children and adolescents are treated as a group with ''reduced autonomy,'' the issue of beneficence, particularly the negative impact that surveys might have on youth, has long been a concern. For example, the American Teen Study, aimed at measuring adolescent health risk-taking behavior, was cancelled by the Secretary of Health and Human Services because of his belief that participation in the study would send the wrong message to participants about casual sex [11]. Caregivers and youth seem willing to be asked sensitive questions, however.…”

Relative size of the literatures for psychopathological disorders: Number of articles pertaining to DSM-iv diagnostic categories

“…However, funding for research on mental disorders is very limited compared to support for medical research and to the costs of mental disorders to society (Lam & el-Guebaly, 1994;Pincus & Fine, 1992). Also, politics and the influence of special-interest groups play a major role in determining which disorders become part of the agenda of federal and private funding sources (Eisenberg, 1988;Gardner & Wilcox, 1993;Johnson, 1992;Kim, Pincus, & Fine, 1988;Smesler, 1995). The relationship between funding and research, how funding priorities are set, and proposals for how priorities should be determined have been discussed extensively elsewhere (e.g., Branscomb, 1995;Douglas, 1993;Friedman & Baldwin, 1990;Garic, 1996;Kiesler, Simpkins, & Morton, 1991;Pincus & Fine, 1988;Shine, 1995).…”