ABSTRACT
The principles in the Nuremberg Code and Belmont Report, on which much of modern Institutional Review Boards (IRB) ethics reviews are based, revolve around a few important concepts. Another important principle within research ethics is that of justice. A key to promoting ethical values is informed consent. To obtain informed consent, researchers tell the participants the general purpose of the research, what will be done to them during the research, what the potential benefit(s) to them and others might be, what the potential for harm to them might be, and the fact that they may withdraw at any time without penalty, even midstream. Another aspect of the principle of autonomy is participants' right to privacy. In addition, the report itself should not discuss or describe individual characteristics of participants in such a way that the identities can be surmised. This is often accomplished in statistics by using aggregated numbers such as group averages.
