As part of the launch of the new ESRC Ethics and Expertise beyond times of crisis project, we have been searching through our pilot research and compiling some resources to get us started. Some of these we hope will be useful for researchers, data ethics professionals, civil servants and policy makers who are exploring the links between ethics, evidence and expertise.
Research Briefing: Ethical Challenges and Frameworks for Behavioural Public Policies
Here we compare 8 ethics toolkits and frameworks which are intended to help policy makers navigate complex ethical issues in relation to behavioural public policies . We discuss commonalities between the frameworks, identify some key gaps and consider their usefulness in implementation. We argue that it is just as important to critically reflect on the ethics frameworks, and propose the DATA framework to summarise the main ethical challenges posed by behavioural public policies. This generates new questions for researchers of ethics and expertise.
The DATA Framework for Ethics of BPP
Diversity (or the absence of it) captures the challenges of myopia, scientific pluralism and the potential failure to consider alternatives to nudge. In BPP there is a risk of focusing exclusively on cognitive and affective behavioural science. This can be the source of significant ethical concerns.
Authority: Technocracy, the role of deliberation and the risk of government bias all point to a similar question: Which voices are involved in determining the suitability and legitimacy of the intervention? If the answer is experts or government alone raises important ethical questions. Do they have authority to define the problem? To determine the solution? To judge what is best for (a specific segmentation of) people?
Transparency should be considered across all dimensions, from problem definition, intervention design and evaluation. This would then capture discussions not only of the transparency of the intervention itself and, therefore, the ability for citizens to exercise autonomy it would also capture the transparency of the knowledge production and decision making process. This would include transparency regarding discussions of the welfare trade-offs and issues of segmentation.
Appropriateness captures broader questions to do with these ethical challenges. Policy makers and the experts that support the design and evaluation of BPP have, to date, directed most of their attention towards effectiveness of interventions. Appropriateness would capture all of these ethical questions and can easily be supported by measurements of effectiveness. It may work, but is it transparent, give citizens the freedom and autonomy to self-govern and meet broader social goals?
This work got us interested in the wider place of ethics in public policy making, and we write about our initial investigations on this in relation to the governmental engagement with ethics advice in relation to the covid pandemic in the UK in Evidence and Policy.