CMHSR is involved on a continuing basis in promoting consumer self-determination and protection of human rights in a variety of spheres. Charles Lidz, Ph.D. has spent much of his career exploring these issues including landmark studies on informed consent in psychiatric treatment and research, coercion in psychiatric admission as well as studies of these issues in medical treatment settings. In the last decade, he and his collaborators have extended this research to other issues. He has completed a major study of the therapeutic misconception in psychiatric and medical research. The therapeutic misconception is the mistaken belief that treatment in research trials will have the same level of focus on the subjects’ benefits as treatment in an ordinary clinical setting. This study found that therapeutic misconception is found in most subjects in medical research and is somewhat more prevalent among subjects in mental health studies. Recently, he has extended this work into looking at how clinical researcher’s dual commitments to following research protocols and providing the best possible treatments to their subjects can undermine the quality of the data collected. Preliminary results of this study suggest that this may be a serious problem for the integrity of clinical research. Another current project looks at IRB decision making processes and how it impacts studies in psychiatric and general medical research.