A New Crop of Scientists Are Using Their Children as Research Subjects - NYTimes.com

A New Crop of Scientists Are Using Their Children as Research Subjects - NYTimes.com

Test Subjects Who Call the Scientist Mom or Dad

Even before his son was born, Pawan Sinha saw unique potential.

At a birthing class, Dr. Sinha, a neuroscience professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stunned everyone, including his wife, by saying he was excited about the baby’s birth “because I really want to study him and do experiments with him.” He did, too, strapping a camera on baby Darius’s head, recording what he looked at.

Dr. Sinha is among a new crop of scientists using their children as research subjects.

Other researchers have studied their own children in the past, but sophisticated technology allows modern-day scientists to collect new and more detailed data. The scientists also say that studying their children allows for more in-depth research and that the children make reliable participants in an era of scarce research financing.

“You need subjects, and they’re hard to get,” said Deborah Linebarger, a developmental psychologist who directs the Children’s Media Lab at the University of Pennsylvania

This is quoted from New York Times

The question: Is this trend -- using offspring as test subjects -- dangerous, unsavoury, ot in any way unethical?

professional ethics,medicine,science