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Ethics in Statistics
Summary: Statisticians and researchers encounter many ethical issues in their jobs. Statistics students could benefit if they study examples of non ethical behaviors in the field of statistics. After reading different scenarios, they will describe the wrong behavior, comment on the consequences of the behavior, and suggest steps to avoid it.
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(5) EAC Toolkit Module CollectionIntroduction
Introduction
This module is designed to help you understand how ethical issues arise daily in the field of statistics. You will examine everyday scenarios or decision points and respond in terms of the ethical issues that arise. Below are frameworks that describe how to test your decisions and solutions in terms of their ethics.
What you need to know …
One of the most difficult stages in problem solving is to jump start the process of brainstorming solutions. If you are stuck then here are some generic options guaranteed to get you "unstuck."
- Gather Information: Many disagreements can be resolved by gathering more information. Because this is the easiest and least painful way of reaching consensus, it is almost always best to start here. Gathering information may not be possible because of different constraints: there may not be enough time, the facts may be too expensive to gather, or the information required goes beyond scientific or technical knowledge. Sometimes gathering more information does not solve the problem but allows for a new, more fruitful formulation of the problem. Harris, Pritchard, and Rabins in Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases show how solving a factual disagreement allows a more profound conceptual disagreement to emerge.
- Nolo Contendere. Nolo Contendere is latin for not opposing or contending. Your interests may conflict with your supervisor but he or she may be too powerful to reason with or oppose. So your only choice here is to give in to his or her interests. The problem with nolo contendere is that non-opposition is often taken as agreement. You may need to document (e.g., through memos) that you disagree with a course of action and that your choosing not to oppose does not indicate agreement.
- Negotiate. Good communication and diplomatic skills may make it possible to negotiate a solution that respects the different interests. Value integrative solutions are designed to integrate conflicting values. Compromises allow for partial realization of the conflicting interests. (See the module, The Ethics of Team Work, for compromise strategies such as logrolling or bridging.) Sometimes it may be necessary to set aside one's interests for the present with the understanding that these will be taken care of at a later time. This requires trust.
- Oppose. If nolo contendere and negotiation are not possible, then opposition may be necessary. Opposition requires marshalling evidence to document one's position persuasively and impartially. It makes use of strategies such as leading an "organizational charge" or "blowing the whistle." For more on whistle-blowing consult the discussion of whistle blowing in the Hughes case that can be found at computing cases.
- Exit. Opposition may not be possible if one lacks organizational power or documented evidence. Nolo contendere will not suffice if non-opposition implicates one in wrongdoing. Negotiation will not succeed without a necessary basis of trust or a serious value integrative solution. As a last resort, one may have to exit from the situation by asking for reassignment or resigning.
What you will do ...
INSTRUCTIONS: Step 1. Read the scenarios and individually answer the questions below them.Step 2. Informally share or duscuss your answers with the class.Step 3. Use tests to evaluate the scennarios proposed in step 1.
There are three steps to complete the module.
Step 1: Individually evaluate the scenarios below and for each of them:
- Describe the unethical behavior.
- Describe the consequences of this behavior.
- Suggest possible positive changes to the unethical behavior.
A data collector intentionally misses three houses he should visit because it is time to pick up her daughter at school. Later, he fills the three questionnaires for the homes missed.
- Describe the unethical behavior.
- Describe the consequences of this behavior.
- Suggest possible positive changes to the unethical behavior.
After analyzing a set of data, a researcher found the results of the study were not the ones expected by his boss. He decided to change the data items needed to make a significant change in the results.
- Describe the unethical behavior.
- Describe the consequences of this behavior.
- Suggest possible positive changes to the unethical behavior.
A researcher wanted to prove that the students of a certain university drank more alcohol beverages than the students from another university. He collected the data for the study in different pubs of the city located near the first university.
- Describe the unethical behavior.
- Describe the consequences of this behavior.
- Suggest possible positive changes to the unethical behavior.
A researcher is in favor of integrating sex education in elementary school. When asked to conduct a study in this area, he developed a questionnaire that enhances the benefits of the program and degrades ones not in favor.
- Describe the unethical behavior.
- Describe the consequences of this behavior.
- Suggest possible positive changes to the unethical behavior.
A newspaper published the results of a poll in a very controversial issue. After reading it, a statistician thinks the study was not reliable because it had a lot of mistakes. He wanted to call the editor to inform about the mistakes of the poll. The stress in his job makes him forget about the call and he did not did it.
- Describe the unethical behavior.
- Describe the consequences of this behavior.
- Suggest possible positive changes to the unethical behavior.
After concluding a study, the researcher found the level of significance to be statistically unacceptable. Since he knew his boss did not know a lot about statistics he did not include this information on his report.
- Describe the unethical behavior.
- Describe the consequences of this behavior.
- Suggest possible positive changes to the unethical behavior.
An employer spent a lot of money in the establishment of a new program. The program did not produce the profits expected. When he presented the results, he used a big scale in the profit graphic to make believe the profits produced were greater.
- Describe the unethical behavior.
- Describe the consequences of this behavior.
- Suggest possible positive changes to the unethical behavior.
Step Two: Informally share or discuss your answers with the class. Use the space below to make notes.
Step Three: Use these tests to structure your discussion of another scenario.
- REVERSIBILITY: Would I think this a good choice if I were among those affected by it?
- PUBLICITY: Would I want this action published in the newspaper?
- HARM: Does this action do less harm than any available alternative?
- FEASIBILITY: Can this solution be implemented given resource, interest, and technical constraints?
Gray Matters
What did you learn?
Sample Module Close Out
Reflection helps us successfully to close the act of learning. Module activities are designed to give us feedback on our decisions and problem solving. How did your group, your class, and your teacher react to your conclusions and arguments? What can you learn from these reactions?
Appendix
Useful EAC Links
Included with this module are a series of links designed to connect students with materials available online that provide background information in ethics. Review them, keep the links useful for your module, and delete those that go beyond your module's scope.
- The glossary available through Online Ethics provides concise and relatively noncontroversial definitions of terms important to ethics
- The link to Computing Cases provides a general orientation to the ethics tests used in the pre-test and gray matters exercises. Computing Cases also contains materials from six extensive case study analyses that have been prepared with funds from the NSF.
- Gary Comstock's NSF-funded project, Langure, provides browsers with several modules on research ethics that can be combined into different courses. Comstock has prepared an excellent introduction to the ethical theories of utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. This is useful for teachers who want to take a more theoretical approach to teaching their ethics module.
- Ethics Updates, a website developed and maintained by Larry Hinman from the University of California, San Diego, provides excellent materials and links in areas such as applied ethics, theoretical ethics, and ethics across the curriculum. The theoretical ethics section has links to several classical philosophical texts in ethics that are publicly available online.
- The EAC Module Collection, the last link, draws together resources available on Connexions for developing, assessing, and disseminating EAC modules.
EAC ToolKit Project
This module is a WORK-IN-PROGRESS; the author(s) may update the content as needed. Others are welcome to use this module or create a new derived module. You can COLLABORATE to improve this module by providing suggestions and/or feedback on your experiences with this module.
Please see the Creative Commons License regarding permission to reuse this material.
Funded by the National Science Foundation: "Collaborative Development of Ethics Across the Curriculum Resources and Sharing of Best Practices," NSF-SES-0551779
Comments, questions, feedback, criticisms?
Send feedback
- E-mail the author of the module, Ethics in Statistics
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More about this content: Metadata | Version History
This work is licensed by Maria de los A. Medina under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 2.0).
Last edited by Maria de los A. Medina on Nov 19, 2007 3:11 pm US/Central.