Question

A criterion for waiving informed consent is that, when appropriate, subjects are provided additional pertinent information after the study. In which of the following studies would it NOT be appropriate to provide subjects with information about missing elements of consent:

	A. A study involving decision-making games in which subjects were led to believe that they were interacting with another student in another room, but were actually interacting with a computer programmed to provide consistent responses to all subjects.
	B. A study in which subjects were assigned to study activities based on an undesirable or unflattering physical characteristic as assessed by members of the research team.
	C. A study in which researchers told students that they would be given a quiz after reading some study materials when the researchers did not intend to use a quiz, but were attempting to focus subjects' attention on the material.
	D. A study in which subjects were told that they performed in the third quartile on an anagram task when in reality students were randomly assigned scores that were not related to their actual performance.

Answer 1

Correct answer is Option B. A study in which subjects were assigned to study activities based on an undesirable or unflattering physical characteristic as assessed by members of the research team

This option is correct because unlike other options given, in this study the study participants physically subjected to activities that were not in conjunction dignity, privacy and knowledge generation. In the other studies a clearly knowledge gaining components such as Study of human interaction with computer, Study to observe focus or Study for performance response was done. In the study Option B, the study subject's individual rights, safety, dignity were seriously not considered and when they did not take any consent it leans towards scientific misconduct.