ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 disrupts students’ recently acquired understanding of informed consent by presenting a research site where a researcher cannot practically provide informed consent. For example, in a virtual reality experiment, a participant may be informed that they are going to take part in a virtual reality experiment, but it’s likely the participant will not be told the nature of that experiment, because knowing would confound the experiment’s data. Thus, consent is not always practical or informed. This roadblock calls on the reader to come up with ways to protect research participants in lieu of fully developed informed consent. Students’ answers to this conundrum are developed within a reading of the Nuremberg Code which encourages researchers to allow research subjects to withdraw from studies without question. As with Eve’s story in Chapter 3, this learning is then applied to Zimbardo and Milgram’s iconic psychology studies. Neither of these studies permitted participants to withdraw at any time.
