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itself. One group which has taken on this job is a nonprofit founded in 2013 called the
Data
The code of ethics promulgated by this organization covers a range of areas, from pro-
tecting customer privacy to protecting practitioners from erroneous claims made by soft-
ware innovators as to the efficacy of various Data Science tools.
For example, one item in the code insists that if a Data Scientist “reasonably believes
a client is misusing Data Science to communicate a false reality or promote an illusion of
understanding, the Data Scientist shall take reasonable remedial measures, including dis-
closure to the client, and including, if necessary, disclosure to the proper authorities. The
Data Scientist shall take reasonable measures to persuade the client to use Data Science
appropriately.”
As the widely critical reaction to the Facebook study suggests, one of the chief ethical
dilemmas confronting the Data Scientist is balancing transparency and a basic respect for
privacy with the need to legitimately accumulate and use data for research purposes.
On the up-side, most users of the Internet rather enjoy having Amazon of Netflix sug-
gest books, music, and films based on their prior purchases and clear preferences. Most
also enjoy when Facebook makes solid recommendations for likely new friends, and when
LinkedIn proposes a business connection which makes sense. But all of these conveniences
- all of these results of Data Science - come at a cost. And that cost is the sacrifice of some
measure of privacy.
Research shows that at the same time as users enjoy the perks enumerated above, they
also resent the loss of privacy. A recent Pew Research
Internet and American Life
study
shows that 86 percent of Internet users have taken at least some steps towards removing or
masking their identities while online. Some data gathering firms, attempting to address this,
have been quite pro-active and open concerning their business models. Acxiom Corpora-
tion, for example, is a firm solely focused on the acquisition and sale of data on individuals
and corporations. They've recently launched
aboutthedata.com
,
a site where users can see
and control what Acxiom knows about them and their online habits.
Overall, however, the ethics concerning the gathering, use, and analysis of customer
information remains very fuzzy, to say the least. “Generally speaking,” says Dr. Rachel
Schutt of Columbia University's Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering, “fields such
as statistics, computer science and the hard sciences don't teach ethics. [Sure] there are pri-
vacy concerns … but software engineers [are only taught] about the elegance or the math-
ematical beauty of the thing they're building, not how it will affect people's lives.”
Karrie Karahalios, Computer Science Professor at the Univeristy of Illinois
Champaign-Urbana points out that “If you do these large social network studies, you don't
