Ethnographers’ concerns about institutional ethics review are by now well-known and several hypotheses have been advanced to explain their complaints. Many have highlighted the lack of epistemological fit between ethnographic methods and ethics review paradigms. Others point to the existence of a “victim narrative” and suggest that circulating horror stories are unrepresentative of ethnographers’ experiences, or argue that ethnographers’ complaints disguise a self-interested and un-reflexive desire to avoid oversight. A final explanation suggests that resistance is restricted to an ageing cohort of scholars raised in an era before ethics review became the norm. Drawing on two surveys of ethnographers conducted a decade apart, we conclude that the most convincing explanation for the longstanding “chorus of complaint” is the fundamental epistemological conflict between ethnographic methods and the way ethics review is currently constituted. We conclude that the time has come to radically reframe and restructure ethics review regimes.

迄今为止，民族志学家对制度伦理审查的关注是众所周知的，并且提出了一些假设来解释他们的抱怨。许多人强调了民族志方法与伦理学审查范式之间缺乏认识论上的契合。其他人则指出“受害者叙事”的存在，并暗示流传的恐怖故事不能代表民族志学家的经历，或者认为民族志学家的诉求掩饰了一种自私和不自觉的避免监督的愿望。最后的解释表明，抵制仅限于在道德审查成为常态之前的一个时代的学者队伍的衰老。借助相隔十年的两次民族志调查，我们得出结论，对长期存在的“抱怨声合唱”最有说服力的解释是人种志方法与当前伦理学审查方式之间的根本认识论冲突。我们得出结论，现在是从根本上重组和重新构建道德审查制度的时候了。