Ethics and society review: Ethics reflection as a precondition to research funding

Researchers in areas as diverse as computer science and political science must increasingly navigate the possible risks of their research to society. However, the history of medical experiments on vulnerable individuals influenced many research ethics reviews to focus exclusively on risks to human subjects rather than risks to human society. We describe an Ethics and Society Review board (ESR), which fills this moral gap by facilitating ethical and societal reflection as a requirement to access grant funding: Researchers cannot receive grant funding from participating programs until the researchers complete the ESR process for their proposal. Researchers author an initial statement describing their proposed research’s risks to society, subgroups within society, and globally and commit to mitigation strategies for these risks. An interdisciplinary faculty panel iterates with the researchers to refine these risks and mitigation strategies. We describe a mixed-method evaluation of the ESR over 1 y, in partnership with a large artificial intelligence grant program at our university. Surveys and interviews of researchers who interacted with the ESR found 100% (95% CI: 87 to 100%) were willing to continue submitting future projects to the ESR, and 58% (95% CI: 37 to 77%) felt that it had influenced the design of their research project. The ESR panel most commonly identified issues of harms to minority groups, inclusion of diverse stakeholders in the research plan, dual use, and representation in datasets. These principles, paired with possible mitigation strategies, offer scaffolding for future research designs.

Towards a Digital Society. Review of the book of T. Siebel «Digital Transformation. Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction»

.

Acknowledgments Networks in Accounting Scholarship: A Note

We explore social networks in accounting research. Our sample spans the 1996–2015 period and includes all research articles that were published in the Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Accounting Organizations and Society, Review of Accounting Studies, and Contemporary Accounting Research. Employing social network analysis, we delineate and discuss the structure of scientific collaboration as it appears in the acknowledgments of published research articles. We identify the most central nodes in this nexus of intellectual partnership. Furthermore, we discover that acknowledgments constitute a small-world social network, with high average clustering coefficient and small average distance within a giant component which covers the biggest part of the acknowledgment network.

Review of "“Evidence-Based Statistics" by Cahusac

In press, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society) Review of "“Evidence-Based Statistics: An Introduction to the Evidential Approach - from Likelihood Principle to Statistical Practice”; Cahusac, Peter "

Como o direito pensa: em busca de uma epistemologia construtivista do direito

Tradução para o português a partir de original em inglês (original: TEUBNER, G. How the Law Thinks: Toward a Constructivist Epistemology of Law. Law & Society Review, [s. l.], v. 23, n. 5, p. 727-757, 1989. doi:10.2307/3053760) [N. do E.].

Ukraine as a civilizational subject: a new method-ology for human development and society (review of monograph by S. Pyrozhkov, N. Khamitov Ukraine as a civilizational subject: from potencies to a new worldview and human existence)

The monograph by S. Pyrozhkov, N. Khamitov “Ukraine as a civilizational subject: from potencies to a new worldview and human existence” (Kyiv, Naukova Dumka, 2020) is devoted to understanding the civilizational subjectivity of Ukraine: a state of development when our country decides its civilized destiny, chooses identity and partners. The authors pose and solve the problem of inventing an effective methodology for understanding the country as a subject of history and geopolitics, propose the development of a humanistic civilization project that would contribute to a decent human self-realization. The paper substantiates the need for the formation of a new security system in a hybrid war, as well as the Euro-Atlantic vector as a catalyst for the subjectivity of Ukraine.

Mathematics as a Tool of Manipulation in Modern Society. Review of the book by Cathy O’Neil «Weapons of Math Destruction. How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy»

The article focuses on the analysis of big data phenomenon that by the expansion of information technology has become a challenge for sociology and social statistics. The history of «big data» term origins is presented, the factors of appearance and development of this phenomenon are determined. It is noted that in the sociological perspective big data have not only transformed the methods of obtaining primary sociological information, but also changed the very logic of the study. The author considers that with a help of big data sociology will be able to return to its calling – the creation of a large theory of society, which, in turn, the opportunity to analyze and interpret big data depends on. Emphasis is placed on Cathy O'Neil’s work «Big data. Weapons of Math Destruction…», which concludes that big data construct new forms of inequality in a contemporary world. It is stressed that through the focus of this idea the American researcher analyzes the impact of big data on various spheres of public life: on the educational system, emphasizing the role of university rankings (which definition is not always transparent) in commercialization of higher education, its turning into big business; on the law enforcement system, in particular in a country such as the United States, noting that the mathematical models developed for the country's police have discrimination grounds for poor and «colored» citizens; on the system of employment, credit system, etc. At the same time, she writes that because of big data privacy is disappearing in people's lives, they are increasingly adapting to models of mass behavior, being under the influence of consumer and political (what is especially alarming) marketing. The author of the publication notes that Cathy O'Neil, unfortunately, gives no answer to the question of how it is possible to counteract the manipulative effects of big data. She relies heavily on ethical regulators and recommends to data specialists create models with mandatory forward linkages.