Talk:Ethics in mathematics

Bogus

This appears to be a pretty bogus article. The examples section is not related to ethics, its a listing of errors that had significant consequences, and the errors were not even committed by mathematicians. I also suspect a conflict of interest in connection with the New South Wales course and perhaps its instructor whose letter to the editor somehow gets cited in this article.--Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 03:45, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Dear Bill,

I've tried to clean up the article as much as I can based on your feedback. It should be clearer now.

I cannot edit the four remaining problems:

- list of involved research groups

- journals

- related areas of research

- criticism

without violating Wikipedia's conflict of interest policy. See my proposal at the bottom of the talk page.

- applebananasmoothie Applebananasmoothie (talk) 15:43, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Editorialising

Many people find the contention of ethics in mathematics troubling. But that is not a basis for deleting sourced content on this page. Please be specific about the need for citations, if your concerns are grounded in an interest in citations. Ca3tki (talk) 15:10, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

Professional Ethics

Many mathematical applications in other professions give rise to ethical problems synthesising the mathematics into established professional ethics. It is worth going through some of these specific examples in statistics etc, as well as specific ethical issues in mathematics practice. Similarly where case studies have been developed in specific applications. Ca3tki (talk) 13:15, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

A call for removing this article to oblivion.

Math will give you unbiased answers. Ethic cant. If ethic is universal truth , why bureaucrats exist?(f.y.i , bureaucrats got some kind of insane mathematical skills) This is not an ad or bogus writing. Someone is using wiki as a proof for unintelligible pseudoscience claim. 103.135.217.190 (talk) 10:56, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

2023 update (I)

The article has now been substantially expanded in order to ensure that readers understand that ethics in mathematics is both a growing but also still a partially contested field of scholarly research. These changes include:

- Cross-connections to other areas (e.g. critical mathematics education, ethics of AI, etc.) have been added to explain the pedagogical approaches behind some of the courses and related areas of research.

- The list of courses on ethics in mathematics has been expanded to avoid biases in the list.

- The connection to dual-use of research and the philosophy of mathematical practice have been added.

- Before the changes, the article was severely under-referenced. The references now reflect the discussions in this area of research.

- All the references that have been added were added while keeping the multiplicity of views in mind.

- Competing views are now explicitly mentioned

Relationship with mathematics for social justice

It is unclear to me what the relationship between ethics in mathematics and mathematics for social justice is. There is only one preprint comparing ethics in mathematics with mathematics for social justice (https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.00705). Do we want this build on this? Given that the mathematics for social justice wiki page now exists, it might make sense to elaborate on any similarities and differences? Applebananasmoothie (talk) 09:07, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

2023 update (II)

added new sections:

- research projects

- journals

- use of mathematics in other professions

- criticism (the article was quite unbalanced before) Applebananasmoothie (talk) 09:39, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

When you have a conflict of interest about the text or one of the citations you are proposing for the text, you are required to disclose it - by proposing such changes on this talk page rather than making the additions yourself. This was explained on your user talk page in a message you chose to delete. MrOllie (talk) 13:27, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. It took me far too long to understand that that's why you've been deleting my additions! I've summarised the proposed update below. :) Applebananasmoothie (talk) 14:33, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Proposed Update (II)

I'm proposing the following addition to the article:

Reason:

- Ethics in Mathematics is currently an emerging research field and for readers it is almost impossible to navigate the area if one does not know where the research is published, what projects exist and that it is predominantly done by a small group of independent researchers at universities in Europe and the United States.

- The research area has been criticised (just like mathematics for social justice), and these criticisms should not be hidden.

---

Research projects

Funded research projects on ethics in mathematics are scarce. It remains a research area that is predominantly worked on by individual scholars at universities across Europe and the United States.

The Cambridge University Ethics in Mathematics Project was started with funding from the Cambridge University Teaching and Learning Innovation Fund in 2018. Their Manifesto for the Responsible Development of Mathematical Works summarises the results from the first five years of the project.

References:

- "About CUEiMP". Cambridge University Ethics in Mathematics Project. 2018. Retrieved 2023-08-14." ethics.maths.cam.ac.uk/

- Manifesto for the Responsible Development of Mathematical Works -- A Tool for Practitioners and for Management". (also available on arxiv https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.09131)

The "Framing Mathematics as a Foundation for Ethical STEM"-project is funded by the National Science Foundation for three years (2023-2025). The project is summarised in their white paper on leveraging ethical guidelines for ethical practice.

References:

- https://ethicalmath.com/home/blog/ Ethical Mathematics. 2022-12-13. Retrieved 2023-08-14.

- Buell, Catherine; Piercey, Victor I.; Tractenberg, Rochelle E. (2022). "Leveraging guidelines for ethical practice of statistics and computing to develop standards for ethical mathematical practice: A White Paper". doi:10.48550/ARXIV.2209.09311

Journals

As of 2023, there do not exist peer-reviewed journals specialising in ethics in mathematics. Research articles currently appear in closely related avenues such as the Science and Engineering Ethics Journal, PRIMUS or the Philosophy of Mathematics Education Journal.

Use of mathematics in other professions

Questions about the ethical use of mathematics are often relevant to the use of mathematics in other professions. In this context, the discourse may happen under the names ethics of quantification or big data ethics, for example

- Journalism has established Professional ethics which is affected by mathematical processing and (re-)publication of sources. Reusing information packaged as facts require checking, and validating, from conceptual confusion to sampling and calculation errors. Other professional issues arise from the potential of automated tools which allow the dissemination of publicly available data which has never been collated.

- Those with professional roles in finance and similar work have a particular responsibility to ensure they use the best methods and data to reach the right answer, as the prestige of mathematics is high and others rely on mathematical results which they cannot fully understand.

- Information economy professionals are concerned with general ethical questions, such as duty of care, confidentiality of information, whistleblowing, and avoiding conflict of interest, which are also of interest to the study of ethics in mathematics.

References:

- DataJournalism.com. Retrieved 2023-08-14.

- West, Jason (2012). "Money Mathematics: Examining Ethics Education in Quantitative Finance" (PDF). Journal of Business Ethics Education. 9: 25–40.

- Müller, Dennis; Chiodo, Maurice; Franklin, James (2022). "A Hippocratic Oath for Mathematicians? Mapping the Landscape of Ethics in Mathematics". Science and Engineering Ethics. 28 (5): 1–30. doi:10.1007/s11948-022-00389-y . ISSN 1353-3452. PMC 9427075. PMID 36042113.

Criticism

The research area is criticised in light of being an essentially contested concept. Mathematicians and educators who see mathematics as neutral, objective and value-free are among its critics. The criticism of ethics in mathematics is often similar to those of mathematics for social justice, i.e. critics argue that issues of mathematical interest should be separated from issues of social justice, that balancing the educational requirements of mathematics and ethics comes at the expense of teaching mathematical knowledge and that it brings unnecessary politics into mathematics.

Applebananasmoothie (talk) 14:27, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

My conflict of interest is that I've worked in this and related areas. My aim is to properly summarise the research and discourse that is happening, so that others can read about it and navigate it. Given that it's so small but so diverse in its outlets (journals), it is hard to understand what is going on without knowing the institutional context (where does the research happen, where is it published, what is the criticism of said research). Applebananasmoothie (talk) 14:30, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

For simplicity: I've added these aspects before, but they were reverted by MrOllie. So, if we are in agreement on this proposal, then it might make sense to just revert his latest undo to save us more work. Applebananasmoothie (talk) 14:34, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

 Not done for now: Please establish a consensus with editors engaged in the subject area before using the {{Edit COI}} template for this proposed change.  Spintendo  00:13, 15 August 2023 (UTC)