Posted by wang on March 01, 1999 at 12:48:12:
>
> I consider these guidelines important. I know the Committee on
> Professional Ethics and others have put in much hard work in formulating
> these revised draft guidelines. It is thus with some reluctance that
> I point out what I consider to be shortcomings of the present draft
> guidelines. Most of my comments relate to the use of these guidelines
> in the context of government statistical work. The guidelines in their
> present form seem largely aimed at the use of statistics in the
> laboratory and as a tool of science, particularly bio-medical research.
> In these circumstances, I am unclear whether the best course of action
> is to revise the present draft to take fully into account these concerns
> or to adopt the guidelines now, with a commitment to address these
> concerns in the next review of the guidelines. There is, of course, a
> middle ground: take on the easy to do now, and do the harder to do later.
>
>
> Anyway here are some of my comments:
>
> (1) Any set of ethical guidelines consists of propositions that may not
> be of equal importance or which may be partially contradictory.
> Accordingly, the application of such guidelines requires judgement and
> the need to make trade-offs. This is also true of the ASA guidelines.
> For example, under clause II.B.8 we are advised to "fulfill all
> commitments," while under clause II.D.3 we are advised to "avoid
> excessive risk to research subjects...." Clearly, situations can arise
> where these two clauses conflict with one another. At a minimum, the
> guidelines should state that trade-offs are involved in order to
> encourage a thoughtful application of the guidelines and to discourage
> the rote citation of one clause to justify terrible actions. Of course,
> one could go further and attempt to introduce some priorities among the
> various ethical propositions. For example, the Hippocratic oath
> instructs doctors to "above all" avoid doing harm to the patient. Is
> some sort of ordering possible for statistics? If not, in general, what
> about in broad classes of applications?
>
> (2)Section I.B, Statistics and Society, is full of the positive
> contributions of statistics, with only a few hints (in the first
> paragraph) of the potential and real harm done by our technology and
> methods in the past. (See, for example, Stephan J. Gould, "The
> Mismeaure of Man"; my recent article in "Population and Development
> Review" on population statistics and the Holocaust; and a recent article
> by Espen Sobye in the journal of the Norwegian statistical office on the
> same topic.) I believe it would add considerable force to the ASA
> guidelines if we introduced into the openning parts of these guidelines
> some examples of the ethical downside or risks we run when ethics are
> not considered.
>
> (3) Clause by clause the language and relevance of these guidelines need
> to be examined in light of the circumstances and conditions of the work
> of government statisticians.
>
> (4)Clause II.D.1 on the protection of human subjects, offers only
> bureaucratic guidance on the protections to be afforded. There is
> nothing wrong with citing U.S. laws and federal guidelines as examples
> of the implementation of protection principles, but we should be able to
> say what the underlying principles are. There are two reasons for
> this. First, not everyone knows the laws and regulations cited, and
> second, what happens if the laws and regulations are changed. This
> leads to the most difficult question of all. What happens when the laws
> are themselves wrong?
>
> (5) Clause I.C.5 attempts to provide an answer to this question:
> "Following all applicable laws and regulations, but also seeking to
> change any ethically inappropiate laws or regulations." But is this
> really the full answer? Just following the law was not an acceptable
> defence at Nuremberg. The answers here are not easy, but if ethical
> guidelines are to help move us toward ethical behavior, we have to find
> ways of addressing such questions in addition to some of the other
> matters covered in great detail in the guidelines.
>
> William Seltzer
> (seltzer@murray.fordham edu)