One of the more interesting background notes to the CDC’s Adverse Childhood Experience Study was that the Institutional Review Board (IRB) responsible for approving this particular research project involving human subjects nearly turned down the ACE Study. Its members thought that people who answered questions about trauma might be triggered and suffer a mental breakdown. They finally agreed to OK the study only on the condition that someone involved wear a pager 24/7 lest a person who answered the 200-question ACE survey become suicidal.
IRBs apparently have been reluctant to approve studies that asked people about trauma and sex, and this has led to delaying or stopping research that could be useful, according to this research overview by Dr. Rick Nauert on PsychCentral.com. This state of affairs led researchers Elizabeth Yeater, Geoffrey Miller, Jenny Rinehart, and Erica Nason at the
