The Anvil of Neglect and the Hammer of Exploitation

This chapter explores tensions in research ethics between three moral pitfalls: sanctioning wrongdoing, avoiding the ravages of neglect, and not saddling a narrow range of actors with overly demanding moral requirements. These tensions are illustrated by the way an argument from Alan Wertheimer repurposes core commitments of the field to argue that research ethics should avert the harms of widespread neglect by weakening some of the protectionist demands of morality and permitting the violation of norms against exploitation, unfairness, and injustice. Although Wertheimer’s proposal is likely to be met with skepticism in the field, the problems it raises reflect shortcomings in research ethics and, most importantly, the failure of the field to connect this activity to social institutions that serve a larger moral purpose.