Problem
Informed consent is an ethical principle that holds potential human research participants should be given enough information about a study so that they can freely and voluntarily decide whether to partake or not (Nijhawan et al., 2013). Informed consent as ensured by the APA (2017) and includes the participants right to know the purpose and procedure of the research, as well as their freedom to disengage without consequence or being compelled to continue. However, the use of deception in research is allowed providing there is no effective alternative method, the prospective results are deemed valuable, where there is prospective harm to the participant and the possibility of deception in research is explained.
Milgram's study on Obedience is often used as an exemplary case in which deception was used to achieve ground-breaking results with lasting implications on the nature of authority (Goodwin & Goodwin, 2017). Participants were misled about the purpose and procedure of the experiment as well as pressured to continue when they expressed the desire to leave. It remains a controversial debate as to whether the value of the research and the necessity of deception to achieve the results outweigh the psychological harm resulting from the extreme nature of the experiment.
Although the Milgram experiment may have been unethical at the time, the continuing debate it created surrounding deception and informed consent, contributed meaningfully to the development of modern psychological research ethics (Vogels, 2014).
When determining the cost-benefit ratio of Milgram's experiment, is it reasonable to give retroactive value to this historical ethical contribution?