As we enter the age of Big Data, there is a great deal of good that we, as Data Scientists can do, but also the potential for great harm. There is now a free online course on this topic.
You will find here several articles on the validity and fairness of our analyses, and on privacy preservation. A high level overview of the ideas can be found in this keynote at IEEE Big Data. All these thoughts can be succinctly summarized in terms of a code of ethics that all data scientists should live by.
Ask Me Anything about data science during a Reddit IAmA on December 7, 2016 at 10 a.m. EST
The Data Scientist's Code of Ethics
- When collecting/analyzing data, I will not surprise the subject of the data.
- Informed consent is the standard
- Data Destruction pledge
- I will own the outcome of my data analysis.
- Address issues of algorithmic bias
- Correct data errors as best as possible
- Consider societal impact

Validity
Featured
Fake News, Conspiracy Theories, and Facebook
Privacy
Fairness
Featured
It is more important to be fair when dealing with algorithms, and also more easy to detect and correct unfairness.