Scientists and scholars push for big data ethics

Earlier this year, social media giant Facebook revealed the results of a study that pulled on the heart strings of its users. The website manipulated the home pages of roughly 700,000 users as part of an emotional experiment in 2012, according to The Guardian. After analyzing the data, the company found it could actually make users feel more positive or negative based on the content.

You may have already heard about this study, but now members of academia are pushing back against the Internet giant, saying the experiment may have been unethical.

According to a Revolution Analytics survey involving 144 scientists from Joint Statistical Meetings, 47 percent of respondents believed the Facebook study was unethical while another 40 percent did not know if the study could be classified as ethical or not, InformationWeek reported.

The result of the survey shows that many members of the scientific community are still grappling with whether or not big data research should contain a finite set of rules and regulations. However, a large group of academic professionals are convinced.

Just recently, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics released a press statement calling for a big data code of ethics to be formulated. In the release, the group points out that an international group of research ethics scholars have already decided that big data ethics is necessary.

"The emotive reaction to the Facebook experiment is proof of the public interest in this set of issues as well as an indication that best practices have yet to be identified," the professionals stated, according to Johns Hopkins' press release.

However, while the professionals agree that designing a code of ethics is morally necessary, they concede that designing such guidelines to fit the modern technology may be difficult.

"[It is] in everyone's interest not to attempt forcing a 20th century regulatory regime onto 21st century technologies and approaches to research and innovation," the scholars said, according to the press release.