Alex London's book, For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics, philosophically analyses some of the foundational tenets of medical research ethics. Before discussing the core arguments of this book, it is important to clarify the relevance of introducing a work like this when the current dominant view — shared within the bioethics community as was reported recently by a few scholars [1] — is that philosophy is no more relevant for the field. Though these scholars meticulously argue about how this disposition can be detrimental to the field, we need to pause and ask why this kind of view arises in the first place. This view, interestingly, is different from similar ones raised in other contexts. For instance, in contrast to the dominant view in science — where scientists think that philosophy is “antagonistic” to science [2] — this view advocates an early retirement for philosophy in bioethics. Why is a discipline once considered central now considered obsolete?