Informed consent is an ethical issue which states that people have a right to know that they are being researched and the nature of the research and should be able to consent to participation prior to the research being carried out. From a research point of view, the downside of informed consent is the Hawthorne Effect which states that subjects who know they are being researched tend to modify their behaviour. This article is a stub. You can help the My English Wiki by [ expanding it].