Science and Engineering Ethics

ISSNs: 1353-3452, 1471-5546

21 found

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  1.  3
    Reflections on Putting AI Ethics into Practice: How Three AI Ethics Approaches Conceptualize Theory and Practice.Hannah Bleher & Matthias Braun - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (3):1-21.
    Critics currently argue that applied ethics approaches to artificial intelligence (AI) are too principles-oriented and entail a theory–practice gap. Several applied ethical approaches try to prevent such a gap by conceptually translating ethical theory into practice. In this article, we explore how the currently most prominent approaches of AI ethics translate ethics into practice. Therefore, we examine three approaches to applied AI ethics: the embedded ethics approach, the ethically aligned approach, and the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approach. We analyze each (...)
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  2.  2
    Designing for Care.Giovanni Frigo, Christine Milchram & Rafaela Hillerbrand - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (3):1-23.
    This article introduces Designing for Care (D4C), a distinctive approach to project management and technological design informed by Care Ethics. We propose to conceptualize “care” as both the foundational value of D4C and as its guiding mid-level principle. As a value, care provides moral grounding. As a principle, it equips D4C with moral guidance to enact a caring process. The latter is made of a set of concrete, and often recursive, caring practices. One of the key assumption of D4C is (...)
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  3.  4
    How Do Scientists Perceive the Relationship Between Ethics and Science? A Pilot Study of Scientists’ Appeals to Values.Caleb L. Linville, Aidan C. Cairns, Tyler Garcia, Bill Bridges, Jonathan Herington, James T. Laverty & Scott Tanona - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (3):1-23.
    Efforts to promote responsible conduct of research (RCR) should take into consideration how scientists already conceptualize the relationship between ethics and science. In this study, we investigated how scientists relate ethics and science by analyzing the values expressed in interviews with fifteen science faculty members at a large midwestern university. We identified the values the scientists appealed to when discussing research ethics, how explicitly they related their values to ethics, and the relationships between the values they appealed to. We found (...)
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  4. Go Big or Go Home? A New Case for Integrating Micro-ethics and Macro-ethics in Engineering Ethics Education.Andrew McAninch - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (3):1-18.
    In this paper, I make a novel case for an expansive approach to engineering ethics education, one that regards micro-ethics and macro-ethics as essentially complementary. Although others have voiced support for including macro-ethical reflection within engineering ethics education, I advance a stronger claim, arguing that isolating engineering ethics from macro-level issues risks rendering even micro-ethical inquiry morally meaningless. I divide my proposal into four parts. First, I clarify the distinction between micro-ethics and macro-ethics as I am construing it, defending my (...)
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  5.  1
    Research Ethics in the Age of Digital Platforms.José Luis Molina, Paola Tubaro, Antonio Casilli & Antonio Santos-Ortega - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (3):1-18.
    Scientific research is growingly increasingly reliant on "microwork" or "crowdsourcing" provided by digital platforms to collect new data. Digital platforms connect clients and workers, charging a fee for an algorithmically managed workflow based on Terms of Service agreements. Although these platforms offer a way to make a living or complement other sources of income, microworkers lack fundamental labor rights and basic safe working conditions, especially in the Global South. We ask how researchers and research institutions address the ethical issues involved (...)
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  6.  2
    Value Change, Energy Systems, and Rational Choice: The Expected Center of Gravity Principle.Martin Peterson - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (3):1-14.
    The values that will govern choices among future energy systems are unlikely to be the same as the values we embrace today. This paper discusses principles of rational choice for agents expecting future value shifts. How do we ought to reason if we believe that some values are likely to change in the future? Are future values more, equally, or less important than present ones? To answer this question, I propose and discuss the Expected Center of Gravity Principle, which articulates (...)
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  7.  1
    The Mentor’s Role in Fostering Research Integrity Standards Among New Generations of Researchers: A Review of Empirical Studies. [REVIEW]Daniel Pizzolato & Kris Dierickx - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (3):1-23.
    Promoting research integrity practices among doctoral candidates and early career researchers is important for creating a stable and healthy research environment. In addition to teaching specific technical skills and knowledge, research supervisors and mentors inevitably convey research practices, both directly and indirectly. We conducted a scoping review to summarise the role of mentors in fostering research integrity practices, mentors’ responsibilities and the role that institutions have in supporting good mentorship. We searched five different databases and included studies that used an (...)
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  8.  2
    A Taxonomy for Research Intergrity Training: Design, Conduct, and Improvements in Research Integrity Courses.Mariëtte van den Hoven, Tom Lindemann, Linda Zollitsch & Julia Prieß-Buchheit - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (3):1-21.
    Trainers often use information from previous learning sessions to design or redesign a course. Although universities conducted numerous research integrity training in the past decades, information on what works and what does not work in research integrity training are still scattered. The latest meta-reviews offer trainers some information about effective teaching and learning activities. Yet they lack information to determine which activities are plausible for specific target groups and learning outcomes and thus do not support course design decisions in the (...)
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  9. Epistemic and Non-epistemic Values in Earthquake Engineering.Luca Zanetti, Daniele Chiffi & Lorenza Petrini - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (3):1-16.
    The importance of epistemic values in science is universally recognized, whereas the role of non-epistemic values is sometimes considered disputable. It has often been argued that non-epistemic values are more relevant in applied sciences, where the goals are often practical and not merely scientific. In this paper, we present a case study concerning earthquake engineering. So far, the philosophical literature has considered various branches of engineering, but very rarely earthquake engineering. We claim that the assessment of seismic hazard models is (...)
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  10.  1
    Principal Investigators’ Priorities and Perceived Barriers and Facilitators When Making Decisions About Conducting Essential Research in the COVID-19 Pandemic.Alison L. Antes, Tristan J. McIntosh, Stephanie Solomon Cargill, Samuel Bruton & Kari Baldwin - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (2):1-24.
    At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, stay-at-home orders disrupted normal research operations. Principal investigators (PIs) had to make decisions about conducting and staffing essential research under unprecedented, rapidly changing conditions. These decisions also had to be made amid other substantial work and life stressors, like pressures to be productive and staying healthy. Using survey methods, we asked PIs funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation (N = 930) to rate how (...)
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  11.  3
    Machine Ethics: Do Androids Dream of Being Good People?Gonzalo Génova, Valentín Moreno & M. Rosario González - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (2):1-17.
    Is ethics a computable function? Can machines learn ethics like humans do? If teaching consists in no more than programming, training, indoctrinating… and if ethics is merely following a code of conduct, then yes, we can teach ethics to algorithmic machines. But if ethics is not merely about following a code of conduct or about imitating the behavior of others, then an approach based on computing outcomes, and on the reduction of ethics to the compilation and application of a set (...)
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  12. The Contribution of Moral Case Deliberation to Teaching RCR to PhD Students.Giulia Inguaggiato, Krishma Labib, Natalie Evans, Fenneke Blom, Lex Bouter & Guy Widdershoven - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (2):1-18.
    Teaching responsible conduct of research (RCR) to PhD students is crucial for fostering responsible research practice. In this paper, we show how the use of Moral Case Deliberation—a case reflection method used in the Amsterdam UMC RCR PhD course—is particularity valuable to address three goals of RCR education: (1) making students aware of, and internalize, RCR principles and values, (2) supporting reflection on good conduct in personal daily practice, and (3) developing students’ dialogical attitude and skills so that they can (...)
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  13.  2
    Exploring the Impact of Tensions in Stakeholder Norms on Designing for Value Change: The Case of Biosafety in Industrial Biotechnology.Vitor A. P. Martins dos Santos, Linde F. C. Kampers, Zoë Robaey & Enrique Asin-Garcia - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (2):1-28.
    Synthetic biologists design and engineer organisms for a better and more sustainable future. While the manifold prospects are encouraging, concerns about the uncertain risks of genome editing affect public opinion as well as local regulations. As a consequence, biosafety and associated concepts, such as the Safe-by-design framework and genetic safeguard technologies, have gained notoriety and occupy a central position in the conversation about genetically modified organisms. Yet, as regulatory interest and academic research in genetic safeguard technologies advance, the implementation in (...)
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  14.  19
    Is Online Moral Outrage Outrageous? Rethinking the Indignation Machine.Emilian Mihailov, Cristina Voinea & Constantin Vică - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (2):1-18.
    Moral outrage is often characterized as a corrosive emotion, but it can also inspire collective action. In this article we aim to deepen our understanding of the dual nature of online moral outrage which divides people and contributes to inclusivist moral reform. We argue that the specifics of violating different types of moral norms will influence the effects of moral outrage: moral outrage against violating harm-based norms is less antagonistic than moral outrage against violating loyalty and purity/identity norms. We identify (...)
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  15.  16
    AI Moral Enhancement: Upgrading the Socio-Technical System of Moral Engagement.Richard Volkman & Katleen Gabriels - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (2):1-14.
    Several proposals for moral enhancement would use AI to augment (auxiliary enhancement) or even supplant (exhaustive enhancement) human moral reasoning or judgment. Exhaustive enhancement proposals conceive AI as some self-contained oracle whose superiority to our own moral abilities is manifest in its ability to reliably deliver the ‘right’ answers to all our moral problems. We think this is a mistaken way to frame the project, as it presumes that we already know many things that we are still in the process (...)
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  16.  62
    The Value-Free Ideal of Science: A Useful Fiction? A Review of Non-epistemic Reasons for the Research Integrity Community.Jacopo Ambrosj, Kris Dierickx & Hugh Desmond - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (1):1-22.
    Even if the “value-free ideal of science” (VFI) were an unattainable goal, one could ask: can it be a useful fiction, one that is beneficial for the research community and society? This question is particularly crucial for scholars and institutions concerned with research integrity (RI), as one cannot offer normative guidance to researchers without making some assumptions about what ideal scientific research looks like. Despite the insofar little interaction between scholars studying RI and those working on values in science, the (...)
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  17.  4
    Correction: Domain Experts on Dementia-Care Technologies: Mitigating Risk in Design and Implementation.Jeffrey Kaye, George Demiris & Clara Berridge - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (1):1-2.
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  18.  7
    How Neurotech Start-Ups Envision Ethical Futures: Demarcation, Deferral, Delegation.Sebastian M. Pfotenhauer, Nina Frahm & Sophia Knopf - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (1):1-20.
    Like many ethics debates surrounding emerging technologies, neuroethics is increasingly concerned with the private sector. Here, entrepreneurial visions and claims of how neurotechnology innovation will revolutionize society—from brain-computer-interfaces to neural enhancement and cognitive phenotyping—are confronted with public and policy concerns about the risks and ethical challenges related to such innovations. But while neuroethics frameworks have a longer track record in public sector research such as the U.S. BRAIN Initiative, much less is known about how businesses—and especially start-ups—address ethics in tech (...)
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  19.  5
    A Review of Scientific Ethics Issues Associated with the Recently Approved Drugs for Alzheimer’s Disease. [REVIEW]Bor Luen Tang & Nicole Shu Ling Yeo-Teh - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (1):1-18.
    Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the devastating and most prevailing underlying cause for age-associated dementia, has no effective disease-modifying treatment. The last approved drug for the relief of AD symptoms was in 2003. The recent approval of sodium oligomannate (GV-971, 2019) in China and the human antibody aducanumab in the USA (ADUHELM, 2021) therefore represent significant breakthroughs, albeit ones that are fraught with controversy. Here, we explore potential scientific ethics issues associated with GV-971 and aducanumab’s development and approval. While these issues may (...)
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  20.  3
    Educating Engineering Students to Address Bias and Discrimination Within Their Project Teams.Roland Tormey, Nihat Kotluk & Siara Isaac - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (1):1-21.
    What training should engineering students receive to enable them to contribute to reducing bias, discrimination and the persistent lack of diversity in engineering? Collaboration is central to professional engineering work and, consequently, teamwork and group projects are increasingly present in engineering curricula. However, the influence of unconscious bias on interactions within teams can negatively affect women and underrepresented groups and is now recognised as an important engineering ethics issue. This paper describes a workshop designed to enable engineering students to work (...)
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  21.  1
    Socially Assistive Devices in Healthcare–a Systematic Review of Empirical Evidence from an Ethical Perspective.Jochen Vollmann, Christoph Strünck, Annika Lucht & Joschka Haltaufderheide - 2023 - Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (1):1-23.
    Socially assistive devices such as care robots or companions have been advocated as a promising tool in elderly care in Western healthcare systems. Ethical debates indicate various challenges. An important part of the ethical evaluation is to understand how users interact with these devices and how interaction influences users’ perceptions and their ability to express themselves. In this review, we report and critically appraise findings of non-comparative empirical studies with regard to these effects from an ethical perspective.Electronic databases and other (...)
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