Code of ethics for social scientists and practitioners:

“With great power comes great responsibility” Uncle Ben

Using data for social sciences raises a lot of questions about just how much data scientists understand about the impact that ethical choices have on the reserach they conduct and publish. and the people who use them, or are used by them.

In an age of widespread Fake News, social and data scientists have to be very careful about their sources and the reasons their services are being contracted.

We live in an age of information, with enourmous amounts of data being constantly produced. Web scrapping in data science, for instance, has the power to collect and store huge amounts of public data on just about anything. The possibilities for the unethical use of such data acquisition powers are unfortunately there. Take the example of Cambridge Analytica and what they did with the readily available Facebook data they had.

Ethics in social and data sciences is becoming an even bigger issue with machine learning-based artificial intelligence, since it produces rules based on data, which means nobody can predict their future behaviors when faced with unforeseen circumstances.

Big Data is here to stay, the pandora box has been opened, and it is our resposiblity as users to make sure it is used responsibly and to have a collective awareness regarding the ethical implications of our actions.