The Declaration of Helsinki was issued by the World Medical Association in 1964 and has since been revised several times. It is a foundational document in medical research ethics, but its requirements for informed consent and review of research projects by an independent committee have profoundly influenced research ethics and regulation outside the biomedical field, including in many fields of social science research. This entry looks at the development of the Declaration of Helsinki, its main principles, objections to its requirements, and the incompatibility of the declaration with certain practices used in education research.

The declaration came into being because of a number of papers and books appearing in the early 1960s, showing that medical researchers were often using vulnerable patients in risky research projects without ...