Practising ethics in different fields of R&

Most of the sources that were selected do not discuss general methods for practising ethics in R&I, but focus on specific fields in which R&I processes take place. The following table provides an overview of the distribution of the different fields discussed in the selected literature:

Table 2: Classification of the sources according to the fields of R&I they discuss. If no specific field is discussed,

classification is based on the thematic focus of the sources.

Field of R&I Number of relevant sources

16 _{The last interval is not fully representative, because the literature searches were conducted in October 2015. It}

could therefore be the case that more relevant sources were published after the literature searches in 2015 that are not taken into account in this overview.

Field of R&I Number of relevant sources

Sources with a field-specific focus: 93

Health technologies 24

Information systems and/or systems development 13 ICT development and/or computer science 13

Nanotechnology 9

Agricultural and environmental research 9

Engineering sciences 8

Business development and innovation 5

Healthcare and medicine 4

Biomedical sciences 3

Operational research 2

Military research 2

Organisation studies 1

Sources with a general focus: 43

Emerging technologies 10

Responsible research and innovation 9

Technology design 9

Discussion of method(s) 7

Technology assessment 7

Ethics of technology 1

Total: 136

It can be observed that of the disciplinary fields of R&I, the field of health technologies is the most represented in the literature, followed by the fields of information systems research and computer science. The considerable number of sources that belong to these fields in comparison to, for example, organisational studies can be explained by the fact that technological innovation is the core focus of these fields.

R&I in the context of health technologies has traditionally been ethically sensitive because it deals with technologies that aim at assisting patients and vulnerable groups such as disabled and elderly people. This would explain its prominent position in the selected literature. Most discussions about ethics in the field of health technologies focus on the perceived need to increase the role of ethics in the broader practice of health technology assessment (HTA) (Braunack-Mayer, 2006; DeJean et al., 2009; Ten Have, 2013; Ten Have, 1995; Hofmann, 2008; Lehoux and Williams-Jones, 2007) and on the articulation of criteria that should inform methods for practising ethics in HTA (Arellano, Willett and Borry, 2011;

2011; Sandman and Heintz, 2014). Importantly, though, discussions also focus on the perceived lack of clear methodological guidance for practising ethics in the field of HTA as it currently stands (Autti-Ramo and Makela, 2007; Burls et al., 2011; Hofmann, 2014). Ashcroft even questions the ability of the field of HTA to address ethical issues altogether, because of its focus on technical questions rather than on evaluative ones (Ashcroft, 1999).

As yet (2015), the selected sources discussing ethics in the field of health technologies do not show signs of widely used methods. The methods that were found for practising ethics proposed in the health technology literature are “checklist”-based methods (Heintz et al., 2015; Hofmann, 2005b), a “value analysis” that seems to be closely related to the value sensitive design approach (Hofmann, 2005a), a “rapid ethical assessment” method (Addissie et al., 2014), an approach according to which stakeholder participation can be organised (Autti-Ramo and Makela, 2007), a bibliometric method for conducting desk research of ethical issues in HTA (Droste et al., 2010), an “interactive technology assessment” approach that combines TA approaches with stakeholder engagement (Van der Wilt et al., 2015), a revised version of the “Socratic approach” (Hofmann et al., 2014) and an “triangular” approach that proposes to organise the practising ethics according to concrete steps, based on the principlism method that originates from biomedical ethics (Sacchini et al., 2009). None of these proposed methods seems to be (as of 2015) adopted by the health technologies field in a broad fashion.

In contrast to the field of health technologies, the fields of information systems research and computer science seem to have produced and seem to use more generally established methods for practising ethics, since several methods are discussed and developed in multiple sources by different authors. Notable examples of these are the ETHICS method (Adman and Warren, 2000; Arellano et al., 2011; Hirschheim and Klein, 1994; Leitch and Warren, 2010; Mumford, 1995; Singh et al., 2007; Wong and Tate, 1994), the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) method (Friedman, 1996; Friedman et al., 2006; Manders-Huits and Van den Hoven, 2009; Shilton, 2014; Van den Hoven, 2008; Van den Hoven, 2007; Van den Hoven and Manders-Huits, 2009; Le Dantec et al., 2009), the ETICA approach (Stahl, 2013; Stahl, 2011; Stahl et al., 2010; Wakunuma and Stahl 2014), the discourse ethics method (Rehg, 2015; Mingers and Walsham, 2010; Mittelstadt et al., 2015), the disclosive ethics approach (Brey, 2000; Light and McGrath, 2010), the ethical impact assessment approach that focuses on stakeholder consultation (Wright, 2010; Wright 2011; Bailey et al., 2013), human-driven design (Ikonen et al., 2012; Niemela et al., 2014) and a checklist approach

and criteria for designing methods to do so (Brey, 2012a; Carew and Stapleton, 2013; Carpenter and Dittrich, 2013; Gorp, 2009; Tavani, 2013), and how ethical analyses could add to the general success of ICT projects (Stapleton, 2008). Markus and Mentzer (2014) discuss particular methodologies for conducting foresight studies, which could be integrated in an approach for practising ethics (such as the Delphi method, anticipatory technology ethics and sociotechnical transition analysis). Sassaman (2009) discusses specific ethical issues for computer security research, but without applying a distinct methodology.

Methods discussed in the field of nanotechnologies are the network approach and the impact and acceptability analysis method (Patenaude et al., 2015; van de Poel, 2008). Also, the organisation of interviews with nanotechnology researchers is discussed to show how ethical issues are incorporated in their work (Viseu and Maguire, 2012). The ethical matrix is widely used in agricultural and environmental R&I (Boucher and Gouch, 2012; Bruijnis et al., 2015; Heleski and Anthony, 2012; Kaiser et al., 2007; Whiting, 2004). Sources that consider ethics in the engineering sciences mostly focus on professional ethics for engineers: on how engineers should work in order to foster a practice of responsible engineering in R&I (Grunwald, 2001; Herkert, 2001; Riley, 2013; Verharen et al., 2013; Whitbeck, 2011). Methods used in the engineering sciences are the VSD method (van Wynsberghe and Robbins, 2013) and a scenario approach dealing with science-fiction narratives of technological prototypes (Stahl et al., 2014). In other, less well-represented fields, sources discuss the perceived need for practising ethics (for operations research) and criteria for doing so (Brans, 2004) as well as ways for practising professional ethics, notably in business settings (Bose, 2012; Fassin, 2000; Polonsky, 1998; Schumacher and Wasieleski, 2013). An embedded researcher approach (Reiter-Theil, 2004) and checklist approaches are used in the biomedical sciences (Winkler et al., 2011), an application of just war theory (Malsch, 2013) and a “metric of evil” method in military R&I (Reed and Jones, 2013), care ethics integrated in VSD in R&I in healthcare settings (Van Wynsberghe, 2013) and a stakeholder framework in operations research (Drake et al., 2009).

A considerable share of our selected sources does not deal with any particular field of R&I, but rather with technology design and development, or ethics of technology in general (see e.g. Bitay et al., 2005). Some sources especially focus on explicating the need to have methods for practising ethics in R&I and formulating concrete steps and criteria that should be part of such methods (Decker, 2004; Palm and Hansson, 2006; Skorupinski and Ott, 2002; Swierstra and Rip, 2007). Some of these sources especially focus on dealing with uncertainty

Sollie, 2007) and the effects of practising ethics on R&I practices (Graffigna et al., 2010). Sources also present and discuss specific methods for practising ethics in R&I, such as codes of ethics or checklist approaches (Verharen and Tharakan, 2010), VSD, the ethical impact assessment (EIA) method (Wright, 2011, 2014; Wright & Friedewald, 2013), ethical scenario methods (Boenink et al., 2010; Ikonen et al., 2012; Ikonen and Kaasinen, 2008; Wright et al., 2014), the network approach (Zwart et al., 2006), the ethical matrix approach (Forsberg, 2004; Forsberg, 2007; Mepham and Tomkins, 2006), the human practices (HP) approach (Balmer and Bulpin, 2013), the anticipatory technology ethics (ATE) method (Brey, 2012a, 2012b), pro-ethical design (Floridi, 2015), the walkshop approach (Wickson et al., 2015) and the technological mediation approach (Verbeek, 2006). Some sources also critically assess the general role of ethics in R&I processes (Grunwald, 2000), focusing for instance on the difficulty of making epistemic claims about future impacts of R&I processes (Mittelstadt et al., 2015) and the difficulty of reconciling the assessment of a certain vision of future outputs of R&I processes with the idea of a person’s future (Karafyllis, 2009).

A number of sources explicitly criticise methods for practising ethics, providing criticisms of the principlism approach or principled approaches in general (Groves, 2015; Page, 2012; Ten Have, 2014), the ethical matrix (Cotton, 2009; Jensen et al., 2011; Mepham, 2000; Schroeder and Palmer, 2003), VSD (Borning and Muller, 2012) checklist approaches (Masclet and Goujon 2012; Roberts, 1999), the ETHICS method (Stahl, 2007), the ETICA method (Rainey and Goujon, 2011) and the methodologies of specific R&I projects focussing on ethics (Thorstensen, 2014). Finally, sources contain discussions comparing different methods (Beekman and Brom, 2007; Doorn, 2012; Ferrari, 2010; Flipse et al., 2013; Forsberg et al., 2014; Gamborg, 2002; Hummels and de Leede, 2000; Lindfelt and Tornroos, 2006; Markus and Mentzer, 2014; Wickson and Forsberg 2014) and discussions about the effects of practising ethics on research professionals and on the R&I process (Foley et al., 2012; Schummer, 2004).