Do It For Science
The Ethics of Sexual Research
Sex in the laboratory was first observed in 1957 by William Masters and Virginia Johnson, who recruited participants to masturbate in controlled settings and further on, observed consenting sex between two adults. They used prostitutes and surrogates for their research, which has caused their results to be questioned for accuracy. Their groundbreaking study led to their report of the Human Sexual Response Cycle, which is composed of four phases described below, and to the advent of sex therapy for ‘fixing’ sexual problems.
However, the main scandal surrounding this study was, clearly, due to their direct observation of sex between participants. How ethical was this study? Clearly, it could not be repeated today in any hospital or laboratory setting, which can provide a pretty definite ‘not ethical at all’ answer to this question in terms of today’s ethical standards. With current discussions surrounding sexual consent, being convinced to have sex with a stranger by a person in a position of power would probably take away the person’s full agency in the sexual act.
In 1978, a conference on the ethical issues in sex research, sponsored by Masters and Johnson themselves, resulted with a consensus on the requirement of appropriately educated practitioners of sex therapy (which Johnson was not at the start of her career in sex research), confidentiality of the participant, and limiting sexual surrogates, especially therapist-client sex therapy (Masters and Johnson’s main developed sex therapy was focused on sexual surrogates). The conference also pointed out the need for informed consent from participants, which brings into question the use of children and the intellectually disabled in sex research, though not explicitly prohibiting it. For some reason, ‘carrying out STD and HIV tests on participants’ was not a part of the ethical discussion in these conferences or in any of the texts found online. So basically, porn has more standards in that aspect. Of course, these ethical requirements are from the late 1970s, and much has changed since then to ensure proper care for participants in research.
Basically, we have to be thankful for the low ethical standards in psychological research in the late 1950s for the incredible contribution from Masters and Johnson about human sexual experience. Despite our hypersexualized society here in North America, studies revolving around sex and sexual habits is still very taboo, and much is left to be tested — How? Under which ethical standards? Only time will tell, though self-reports are a good start to this topic which can hardly be properly tested in the laboratory.
Masters Of Sex Trailer (I highly recommend a binge watch of all 3 seasons)
