Online Program

Borrowing Data Without Permission: It’s Okay When It Is for the Greater Good, Right? (305256)

Keywords: Ethics, case-based learning, professional integrity and accountability, responsibility to science/public/funder/client, responsibility to research subjects, responsibility to other statisticians or statistics practitioners

Ethics is an integral part of research and business processes. Statistical ethics training often focuses on handling data, applying methodology, and interpreting results honestly and objectively. The ASA Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice focus on more than these tenets. Case-based learning is an effective way to integrate ethical thinking into analytic workflows. This talk will illustrate case-based ethics reasoning and encourage the use of this approach in academia and the workplace. We will present a case of a statistician simulating data based on an unauthorized data set – all for “the greater good.” The case lends itself to some of the often-neglected ASA tenets: professional integrity and accountability, responsibility to science/public/funder/client, responsibility to research subjects, and responsibility to other statisticians or statistics practitioners. In an interactive discourse, we pose ethical questions such as 1) Which principles are violated or questionable? 2) What is the professional's responsibility to the research and community? and 3) What are the possible consequences behind the statistician’s actions? We also reflect on possible resolutions.