Data Ethics 3

Data Ethics Reading

Read at least four of these articles, which relate to data ethics in a variety of ways.

  1. Guardian article on Cambridge Analytica

  2. Propublica article on risk assessment in criminal sentencing

  3. NYTimes: Gender discrimination by an approval algorithm for Apple’s credit card

  4. NYTimes: Changes to the Census could make small towns disappear

  5. NYTimes: Location tracking cell phones

  6. NYTimes: Data protection

  7. Washington Post article on racial bias in medical algorithms (The Washington Post article has a paywall, but Wellesley has access. I downloaded the article and put the pdf in this folder, which is accessible if you are logged into a Wellesley account.)

  8. NPR: IBM discontinues facial recognition products

  9. Ethics of digital contact tracing

  10. NPR: Fired data scientist launches coronavirus dashboard

  11. Harvard Business Review: Racial disparities in health care outcomes

  12. Reuters: Amazon's recruiting tool that filtered out women's colleges

  13. NYTimes: Indigenous data sovereignty

  14. NYTimes: Many trial volunteers got the placebo vaccine. Do they now deserve the real ones?

  15. NYTimes: An algorithm that grants freedom, or takes it away

  16. NYTimes: Using A.I. to find bias in A.I.

  17. NYTimes: 2020 Census undercounted

  18. NYTimes: What should happen to our data when we die?


Next, read

Of oaths and checklists


(a) Consider a research project that you have conducted or read about. Which of the suggested check-list items in “Of oaths and checklists” might apply to that project?

(b) For at least four of the example articles, suggest and briefly discuss one or two check-list items that might have helped prevent the ethical problem described or that relate to the issues discussed in the article.