The paper examines the growth of ‘ethicalization’ into all aspects of the social research industry. Conventionally issues of ethics have been applied by that industry to wider societal phenomena. However, the present paper focuses attention on the industry itself. The ‘new ethics’ involve a systematic de-professionalization of the social research industry. Such developments are the consequence of three underlying forces: American hegemony, New Labour authoritarianism and the resurgence of an exclusive natural science paradigm to encompass all research activities within the industry. The paper concludes that the result of these trends has produced a bureaucratically- massaged, anodyne form of social inquiry and ends with a call to arms by those working in the industry.