Sites We Like: Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

For the next few weeks I am going to use this blog to highlight some interesting ethics web sites that I visit on a regular basis. These are sites that I often turn to when looking to keep up with the latest news in the areas of environmental or business ethics, find out what other ethics centers are up to, or find a new case study to discuss in a class or workshop.

One the best web sites I have found when looking for new and well-written case studies is the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Their library of case studies covers all areas of academic ethics, business ethics, social ethics, technology ethics etc. and are always thought provoking. The Markkula Center also hosts a student discussion forum called The Big Q on Facebook where students can discuss ethical questions related to life on campus.

Be sure to check this blog in the next few weeks as we highlight more sites we like!

Ethics News: Scientists Against Sloppiness

BioCision, a biotech company that develops temperature-controlling products such as special alloy eppendorf tube racks that protect biological samples during rapid and repeated freezing, is launching a tongue-in-cheek campaign with the serious aim of standardizing laboratory practices to ensure the quality of cell and tissue samples. The campaign seeks to get scientists to pay more attention to how biological samples are treated in the lab, as shifts in temperature can have huge effects on the quality of many cell and tissue samples.

The campaign and its web site (which is rather fun to read through) calls needed attention to the "little murders" of everyday science, or the small oversights and misdemeanors that we all are subject to in the lab, such as leaving a sample in a test tube rack on the counter for too long or not being consistent in how we handle each of samples in an experiment. In some cases, these small mistakes can lead to problems down the line in the quality of data. So while samples probably aren't feeling too abused by these practices, the integrity of the final results might be being compromised.

See "Zigmond, Michael and Beth A. Fisher. "The Little Murders of Everyday Science: Commentary on 'Six Domains of Research Ethics.'" Science and Engineering Ethics Volume 8, Number 2, 229-234, DOI: 10.1007/s11948-002-0024-3

Ethics News: Synthetic Biology

The highlight of the September 2nd edition of Science Magazine is a collection of articles on synthetic biology, an emerging field that, "brings together biologists, physicists, chemists, and engineers who seek to bother understand life and to build new biological functions."(1) Sounds a bit like nanotechnology in its cross-disciplinary draw. But what kinds of ethics questions does this new field raise? The issue includes an interesting article on regulating industrial uses of new biotechnologies, but here are a few organizations are taking a closer look at these issues...

The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues released a report in December 2010 entitled, New Directions: The Ethics of Synthetic Biology and Emerging Technologies.

The National Academy for Engineering held a workshop on synthetic biology and engineering ethics in September of 2010. You can read the notes from the workshop here.

The National Academy of Engineering sponsored a workshop in September of 2010 looking at synthetic biology and engineering ethics. You can read the notes from this workshop here.

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars started the Synthetic Biology Project in 2010 to promote public and policy discourse on synthetic biology and its societal implications.

(1)Vinson, Valda and Elizabeth Pennisi. 'The Allure of Synthetic Biology." Science 333(6047) pp.1235.

Ethics News: Social Media, Flash Mobs, Riots & Privacy : Where is the Balance?

In the aftermath of the riots that occurred in many major British cities earlier this month, new questions have been raised about if police should have the ability to monitor and event restrict the use of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook during times of civil unrest or when these sites are being used to plan crimes and outmaneuver police. In an NPR piece this morning, Bill Branton, the former Chief of Police in New York and later Los Angeles who is also acting as an adviser to the British Government on how to combat organized gang violence, spoke about how the use of social media by criminals is changing the tactics of how police try and prevent crimes as well as the issues of privacy and surveillance raised by these new tactics.

Meanwhile, the New York Times just ran a story last Thursday that British officials and representatives of Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry met to discuss voluntary ways to limit or restrict the use of these networks for criminal behavior.

What do you think? Social media has played a large role both in the revolutions of Libya and Egypt, as well as in the British riots of this month. Should law enforcement have the ability to monitor social media sites, and if so, what kinds of limitations should be put in place to help protect users' privacy?

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to IIT for the Fall Semester!

CSEP is in the midst of finishing off some of its summer programs, including a redesign of our web site which will be launched in September, the addition of hundreds of new case studies to the Ethics Education Library, and continuing to work with the Boeing Scholars Academy as the school year begins for Chicago-area high schools. We look forward to an interesting and event-filled semester!

Ethics News: Changes to Rules Governing Human Participants in Research

The New York Times reported on July 24th that the U.S. Government is proposing major changes in the rules covering research involving human participants. The proposed changes would include expanding the Common Rule's coverage to all studies conducted at institutions that receive money from any of the 15 federal agencies that have adopted the Common Rule, even if the study is being funded by a another, non-governmental organization, such as a drug company. Other changes would allow a single institutional review board to oversee studies taking place a multiple sites, and aim and making it less cumbersome to do surveys or other social science research in which risks to participants are usually less than for medical studies.

The goal of these changes is to strengthen some protections in regards the changing research climate, such as the growing use of DNA data in research, while also reducing red tape that can impede the success of some studies.

Ethics News: Harvard Facebook Study Shows Privacy Issues Related to Internet Research

An article from the Chronicle of Higher Education published on July 10th describes a recent study completed by Harvard sociologists that studied how race and cultural tastes affect relationships. They based their study on 1,700 Facebook profiles from a group of students at an anonymous university. Problems emerged in 2008 when Michael Zimmer of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee showed that even with the protections the Harvard researcher utilized to protect the data, the data could be identified from coming from the Harvard class of 2009. Researchers taking part in the study used Harvard students as research assistants to download the data, thereby allowing them to access profiles of students that might have set their profiles to be visible only to Harvard's Facebook network. This raises the question of if the students included in the data set truly intended to have their profile data publicly visible and accessible for downloading.

The article shows how many questions are raised by the use of data on social networking sites for research purposes, and the changing relationship between researchers and their subjects in these kinds of contexts.