In April of 2025, the Journal of Academic Ethics published a paper titled, “Exercise Science Students as Research Participants in Faculty-Led Research: An Ethical Dilemma.” The paper was written by two kinesiologists or biomechanists in the United States: Nicole Rendos and Christopher Wilburn. In their paper, which was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, Rendos and Wilburn put forward the idea that exercise science students are vulnerable to coercion to participate in research experiments because those experiments are often conducted by the students’ lecturers or supervisors.
I agree with the overall premise of Rendos and Wilburn’s paper. For many years, I have observed some exercise science faculty and postgraduate students coercing students to participate in experiments. I have never witnessed overt coercion that involved students being punished or threatened with punishment for not participating in experiments. Instead, the coercion has been more subtle. It has been more like “nudges” that ramp up the pressure to participate or strategies that “trap” the individual into feeling that they need to participate. On multiple occasions, I have witnessed researchers (often postgraduate students) directly approaching other students or researchers at their desks and asking if they want to participate in a specific experiment. In these cases, I have never witnessed someone being threatened with punishment if they reject the offer. But clearly there is a difference between being approached spontaneously in person versus reading about a volunteer opportunity through an advertisement. The direct approach is further problematic because students are sometimes approached while sitting in offices that they share with other students. The student who is approached might be feel pressured to say “yes” because they know others are overhearing their response. In fact, the researcher may be approaching all the students in the office. Thus, a student may feel pressured to say “yes” because other students in the office are saying “yes.”
Another technique that is sometimes used to ratchet up the pressure to participate in a study is to email individual people requesting their participation. I have received several emails like this over my time in academia.
A key reason why these pressure-to-participate techniques sometimes occur in exercise science departments is because postgraduate student researchers are under pressure to finish projects by thesis deadlines, and most exercise science projectes are not funded by big research grants. Consequently, these departments have little or no money to pay individuals to participate in experiments. Then, because there is little incentive for individuals to take time out of their schedules to run on a treadmill until exhaustion or get their nerves zapped, finding participants becomes difficult. Professors and postgraduate students then apply pressure on students to participate.
Poor project management and decision making also play a role. For example, professors often put their postgraduate students in binds by asking them to complete projects that are unfeasible given the lack of money, resources, and individuals who are willing and eligible to participate.
Thus, I commend Rendos and Wilburn for discussing the issue of coerced participation in exercise experiments, though I think the argument would be strengthened by survey data of exercises science students, asking them how often they have felt coerced to participate in experiments. Rendos and Wilburn cite relevant findings from psychology students, but they represent a unique cohort, because, somehow, the field of psychology has, for many years, been allowed to have students participate in experiments as part of their requirements.
Nevertheless, I want to call out Rendos and Wilburn on the aspect of their paper that dealt with the sex of exercise research participants. A main driver of their paper was an observation that women are now more frequently serving as participants in exercise studies than in the past. Consequently, the authors want to ensure that female exercise science students are protected and treated ethically.
“…the push for increased female representation in exercise science research and the perception that female exercise science students are more willing participants - make these students a prime recruitment target by faculty principal investigators. However, when these faculty members also hold an evaluative position over female exercise science students, such targeted recruitment may create a coercive dynamic, pressuring students to participate rather than allowing them to make a fully voluntary decision.”
The authors continued:
“The power imbalance between faculty researchers and students…may unintentionally pressure students to volunteer to participate in exercise science research. Female exercise science students may be even more vulnerable, as their interest in exercise aligns with the efforts to address the historical under-representation of women in exercise science research.”
I highlight Rendos and Wilburn’s comments for two reasons. First, within exercise science, there continues to be a lack of appreciation for what men from the past have done for the field – both as researchers and participants. Rendos and Wilburn’s article fits within this trend because, if indeed there are issues regarding coercion in exercise experiments, then presumably these issues were just as bad if not worse in the past, when men were more often the participants.
In 2025, the Journal of Applied Physiology – one of the most important journals in the history of exercise science – published an audit of its archives. The auditors found that males were 66% of participants. From this, the auditors went on to predict how many years would be required to have a level of female participation that would make up for all “missing” female data from earlier years. However, the auditors’ view was one of the glass being half empty. The auditors took the all-too-common position that their findings reflect some form of female victimization or disadvantage, as early researchers were supposedly not concerned about women’s health. Such auditors never seem to consider what life today would be like without all the men who volunteered in, or perhaps were coerced into participating in, the earliest and riskiest experiments. Such auditors never seem to consider that what happened in the past was not so much about female discrimination – though some may have existed – instead, it demonstrates the uniqueness of men. This uniqueness of men is the glass half full perspective of this research history. It acknowledges that history is not perfect but that much knowledge obtained from male participants is indeed applicable to women, and many men were the first to serve as participants in the earliest and riskiest research.
The second reason why I have highlighted Rendos and Wilburn’s article is that I think we will see more articles like theirs in the future. As more women coordinate and participate in exercise experiments, concerns over participant safety is likely to be heightened, which may result in further research ethics bureaucracy. Moreover, we are likely to continue to see more audits of female representation in exercise experiments. If current trends remain, when researchers discover lower female than male representation, they will likely say that early researchers did not care about women and their health. Along the way, these future auditors will fail to acknowledge the importance of male participation in experiments and what it would have meant to participate in earlier, riskier experiments.
Moving forward, my hope is that the new wave of female exercise scientists, who seem dedicated to auditing every nook and cranny of the exercise science literature to identify female “underrepresentation”, will take a moment to reflect upon all the men from decades gone by who have driven exercise research – both as researchers and participants. By studying the history of the field with an open mind – and not one hellbent on declaring discrimination against women – one will likely learn to express humility and gratitude toward the men who built the field. Moreover, by studying the history of the field’s researchers and participants, this new wave of female exercise scientists can also learn many interesting things about the history of female researchers, female participants, and women’s health. They can learn that girls and women were not ignored in early exercise-related research. Their frequent participation has been documented.
Conclusion
Rendos and Wilburn proposed policies that they believe will reduce the likelihood of exercise science students feeling coerced to participate in experiments. They recommended that institutions implement polices that “prohibit faculty from recruiting students they directly evaluate; require third-party recruitment and data collection methods, such as research offices or neutral faculty members; provide truly equivalent alternatives to research participation, ensuring participants do not perceive them as more burdensome; and educate students on their right to decline participation without academic consequence.”
I will add the following recommendations. First, recruitment of participants should occur in a generalized not individualized manner. Directly approaching individuals, whether in person or via email, should be discouraged. Instead, recruitment should occur via paper advertisements posted around campus, digital advertisements sent out via department, school, or university mass email lists, and digital advertisements posted on social media. General announcements made in classes are also appropriate so long as the experiment being advertised is not the lecturer’s and so long as the students understand that participation in the experiment is not linked to grades. The larger issue of how psychology departments can require psychology students to participate in psychology studies, while other departments are not allowed to do the same, is an issue that universities should also address.
Another way to alleviate the problem of difficulty in finding participants, which is part of what leads to participant coercion, is for universities to invest in a research registry. In the registry, researchers can advertise their experiments, and students can sign up for the experiments via the online portal. The registry would also give students the opportunity to voluntarily sign up to be contacted by researchers about new participation opportunities. If a university tries to argue that they do not have the staff, resources, or infrastructure to implement such a system, then they should be reminded about how much money and resources they have wasted on DEI and other administrative misadventures.
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