Lab 2 - Ethical Dilemmas

Last week, we looked at situations in which data mining information could fall into the realm of human subjects research. The ethical mode of action to take in these situations is to gain informed consent from participants in the data mining effort.

There will again be a brief lecture at the start of lab to further elaborate on the following points.

Ethical dilemmas can arise when what we should do is at odds with the current situation or when competing "shoulds/oughts" are in play. When such situations arise, we can employ tools to help come to a decision, keeping in mind there is not always just one "right way" to resolve the dilemma or one "proper" course of action.

Ethical approaches:

• Consequentialist approach - What are the results or consequences from each course of action? Keep in mind that ethically questionable decisions can result in good consequences, so this approach is not always sufficient on its own.
• Respect for persons (deotological) approach - Are people being treated as they deserve to be treated? Would you be okay if you were on the "receiving end" of the decision?
• Ethics of aspiration approach - Is the action/decision being considered consistent with what you aspire to be? Focus on good character and striving for excellence instead of rules.

• Identification/recognition of dilemma - Identify issues and stakeholders
• Analysis - Assess possible decisions/actions in terms of the above three ethical approaches. Keep in mind that legal does not always mean moral, and that there may be cultural differences in ethical analysis.
• Justification - Look for convergence between multiple ethical approaches in the analysis stage. May require revisiting the analysis stage in hard cases, keeping in mind complete convergence is often not possible.
• Decision/action - Make decision based on above stages. May not be a best possible course of action since there is often incomplete data available.

1. Dave has been hired to work at a web design firm. Dave has been out of work for some time and his finances are in dire straits. Dave's immediate supervisor asks Dave to work with one of the firm's most important clients in the design of a new website. The client wants to employ data mining techniques on the visitors of the website to determine what other sites the user has visited (e.g. the referrer information, any browser history that a client-side script can recover, web bugs, etc.) in order to determine the interests of the visitor. The client wants to ignore any "do not track" flags set by the browser. The client wants to use this information to target pop-over advertisements for the website. Additionally, if the visitor logs in to their account, the client plans to sell this information to other marketers along with their account details such as their email and postal addresses, gender, age, and so on. The client wants to bury all legally required privacy disclosures in "legalese" on the privacy policy page. What should Dave say/do in response to this request?
2. Jane is a medical researcher. During the course of her normal duties, she observes people in another research trial in the waiting room while she is calling back the people participating in her research trial. Jane thinks she has noticed a potential pattern that would make people at high risk for critical complications of the other research trial. If she had access to the medical data for this other research trial, she could perform data mining to determine if her suspected pattern is backed up by the data. Since she is not a member of the other trial, the people involved in that trial have not consented to Jane seeing their medical records. What should Jane do?

We will also discuss each group's thoughts around an hour after we have broken into groups. Even if your group has not yet reached a decision for each scenario, discuss the thought process your group has followed to that point and any debates your group has had, particularly if there is conflict between different ethical approaches.