The ethical principle of "justice" is perhaps the most difficult to apply by the individual researcher. Taken in the intended context of " who will be selected as the subjects of the research ," the principle applies in two directions. Classes of persons shall not be omitted from research, and equally, classes of persons shall not be asked to take the burden of research risks for other classes. Women's illnesses shall not be studied to the exclusion of men's, or vice versa. Disadvantaged women, for instance, shall not be chosen for the study of women's illnesses in excess of their proportion in the society, when the expected benefit is for all women. In other words, there must be an intrinsic and accumulating fairness in research.
The individual researcher is responsible for each increment of fairness. The researcher may not ignore the fact that a class or classes of persons have been systematically absent from the research. Nor can the researcher justify selecting from a narrow subject base for broadly applicable research simply to achieve the homologies of a longitudinal study. Research results obtained from confined subject pools are intrinsically, statistically, and scientifically suspect.
For example, the reliance of academic researchers on the 18 to 25 year old college student population for human subjects on questions of interest to all age and educational groups does not meet basic scientific, statistical, or justice standards. This group may be useful for pilot studies, however.
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