RT Article
T1 Exploitative, irresistible, and coercive offers: why research participants should be paid well or not at all
JF Journal of global ethics
VO 12
IS 1
SP 69
OP 86
A1 Belfrage, Sara
LA English
PB Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
YR 2016
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1739060946
AB This paper begins with the assumption that it is morally problematic when people in need are offered money in exchange for research participation if the amount offered is unfair. Such offers are called ‘coercive’, and the degree of coerciveness is determined by the offer's potential to cause exploitation and its irresistibility. Depending on what view we take on the possibility to compensate for the sacrifices made by research participants, a wish to avoid ‘coercive offers’ leads to policy recommendations concerning payment for participation. For sacrifices considered compensable, we ought to offer either no payment or payment at a level deemed fair, while for sacrifices deemed incompensable, we always ought to offer no payment because as compensation appears and increases, so too does coercion. This article provides a model for thinking of the way in which degrees of exploitativeness, irresistibility, and coerciveness interact with the size of the reward for compensable and incompensable cases. The conclusions are of particular relevance in contexts where potential research participants are poor or in other ways lack reasonably good options, as is often the case when international pharmaceutical companies or researchers based in the Global North place clinical trials in the Global South.
K1 coercive offer
K1 Compensation
K1 Exploitation
K1 irresistibility
K1 research participation
DO 10.1080/17449626.2016.1150318