“’Reviewers are well placed to be ethical gatekeepers in some respects, because they’re close to this research. They have good technical knowledge,’ [University of Maryland information scientist Katie] Shilton said. ‘But lots and lots of folks in computer science have not been trained in research ethics.’ ​Knowing when to raise questions about a paper may, in itself, require a level of ethical education that many researchers lack. Furthermore, deciding whether research methods are ethical is relatively simple compared with questioning the ethical aspects of a technology’s potential downstream effects. It’s one thing to point out when a researcher is researching wrong. ‘It is much harder to say, “This line of research shouldn’t exist,”’ Shilton said.”

Read the full article:  The New Yorker