 The proper response to this proposal is not to claim that the study is acceptable because the participants are competent and they gave informed consent. The proper response is to point out that, while these considerations are undoubtedly important, they do not establish that the study is ethically acceptable. One needs to consider many other things. Is the experiment sufficiently similar to real life abuse that its results will have external validity? Are there less risky ways to obtain the same results? Finally, even if these questions are answered in a way that supports the research, the question remains whether investigators may ethically treat their participants in this way. The fact that essentially everyone working in research ethics would hold that this study is unethical—investigators are not permitted to treat participants in this way—suggests that research ethics, both in terms of how it is practiced and possibly how it should be practiced, goes beyond respect for individual autonomy to include independent standards on investigator behavior. Defining those standards represents one of the more important challenges for research ethics.