 With this in mind, one might regard the limitations on research with competent adults as betraying the paternalism embedded in most approaches to the ethics of clinical research (Miller and Wertheimer 2007). Although the charge of paternalism often carries with it some degree of condemnation, there is a strong history of what is regarded as appropriate paternalism in the context of clinical research. This too may have evolved from clinical medicine. Clinicians are charged with protecting and promoting the interests of the patient “in front of them”. Clinician researchers, who frequently begin their careers as clinicians, may regard themselves as similarly charged. Paternalism involves interfering with the liberty of agents for their own benefit (Feinberg 1986; see also entry on  paternalism).  As the terms are used in the present debate, ‘soft’ paternalism involves interfering with the liberty of an individual in order to promote their interests on the grounds that the action being interfered with is the result of impaired decision-making: “A freedom-restricting intervention is based on soft paternalism only when the target’s decision-making is substantially impaired, when the agent lacks (or we have reason to suspect that he lacks) the information or capacity to protect his own interests—as when A prevents B from drinking the liquid in a glass because A knows it contains poison but B does not” (Miller &amp; Wertheimer 2007). ‘Hard’ paternalism, in contrast, involves interfering with the liberty of an individual in order to promote their interests, despite the fact that the action being interfered with is the result of an informed and voluntary choice by a competent individual.