People put a lot of stock in data. Data is essentially information. It often becomes the basis for an assumption. When we think of data, we think of facts. That works in many settings. For example, an ingredient label, done truthfully, lists ingredients. If it lists flour, one would reasonably assume the product contains flour….
Diagnosis is a tricky word. Doctors diagnose some scientific truths: for example, a finding of a tumor and the accompanying pathology report describing cellular activity and genetic information, etc. Diagnosis is also the term used for many things for which science does not provide a distinct test – diagnosis depends in those cases on a…
Voluntariness at the time one provides data is an important, overlooked part of providing informed consent. In medicine, informed consent requires voluntariness, yet the on-the-ground experience may reveal pressures to comply. The new landscape of responsible technology, while it incorporates certain types of consent like clicking to accept cookies, needs more definition and clarity around…
Part 2 in a series on privacy The ethics literature on cybersecurity rarely focuses specifically on children’s data stored by or for schools. Critical analysis should inform an ethics debate over the collection, storage, and use of children’s medical records at the foundational level. Hackers have breached vulnerable websites of labs, insurers, and hospitals. While…
In bioethics, moral controversies may have high stakes. Differences of fact or opinion are of a different nature than moral disagreements. There are factual disagreements where a truth may be discovered, making one side right and one side wrong. During the COVID-19 pandemic, some such factual questions were politicized, but that alone does not turn…
Through a feminist lens, the self-help industry is sometimes ethically problematic, as noted by various scholars. In particular, the personal growth self-help industry presents a bioethics issue surrounding mental and physical health, equality, justice, employment discrimination, and child care. It challenges the balance between pursuing more and being content with what one has. Some self-help…
My effort to add critical thinking to bioethics, a choppy path at best, sparked me to question some fundamentals about academic publishing. From long ago on the Urban Law Journal at Fordham Law School to my current position at Voices in Bioethics, Columbia University’s journal, I have encountered and managed viewpoint discrimination. In training peer…
Data-Generating Patents require a broad ethical approach that incorporates business ethics. Ethics should that adhere to the spirit behind antitrust law and competition to protect consumers. Intellectual property rights are expanding. Data-generating patents can preclude competitors from obtaining, collecting, or generating the same type of data. It also deprives people of control over their data…
Thinking like a lawyer can help with some bioethics approaches. When given a fact pattern, lawyers tend to zero in on the issues. Some people spend more time on the facts and others move toward identifying issues and applying or suggesting rules that might be generalizable. Both ways of thinking are valuable. A handle on…