Clarifying confusions about coercion

Abstract

Hawkins and Emanuel infer that while the issue of coercion can certainly arise in research and clinical care, more often than not, ethical concerns about coercion are misidentified. They suggest that to avoid confusion–to make progress toward conducting research ethically–one should avoid the term “coercion” unless it is clearly appropriate, and that at the same time, one should try to become better at correctly identifying and labeling the real existing worries.