Data for humanitarian purposes

Unni Karunakara, a former president of "Doctors without borders", gave a talk at International Data Week 2016 on September 13 about the role of data in humanitarian organizations. The talk was very powerful in its simplicity and urgent need for better data and its management and dissemination. It was a story of human suffering, but also a story of care and integrity in using data to alleviate it.

Humanitarian action can be defined as moral activity grounded in the ethics of assistance to those in need. Four principles guide humanitarian action:

• humanity (respect for the human)
• impartiality (provide assistance because of person's need, not politics or religion
• neutrality (tell the truth regardless of interests)
• independence (work independently from governments, businesses, or other agencies)

These principles affect how to collect and use data and how to ensure that data helps. Data collected for humanitarian action is evidence that can be used for direct medical action and for bearing witness, which is a very important activity of humanitarian organizations:  

“We are not sure that words can always save lives, but we know that silence can certainly kill." (quoted from another MSF president)

Awareness of serious consequences of data for humanitarian action makes "Doctors without borders" work only with data they collect themselves and use stories they witnessed firsthand. Restraint and integrity in data collection is crucial in maintaining credibility of the organization.

Lack of data or lack of mechanisms to deliver necessary data hurts people. Thus, in Ebola outbreak it took the World Health Organization about 8 months to declare emergency and 3000 people died because data was not available in time or in the right form. The Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO) was created to help with tracking and researching infectious diseases by sharing data, but many ethical, legal, etc. issues still need to be solved.

Humanitarian organizations often do not have trustworthy data available, either because of competing definitions or lack of data collection systems. For example, because of the differences in defining "civilian casualty" numbers of civilians killed in drone strikes range from a hundred to thousands. Or, in developing countries or conflict zones where census activities are absent or dangerous, counting graves or tents becomes a proxy of mortality, mobility rates and other important indicators. Crude estimates then are the only available evidence.

"Doctors without borders" (MSF) does a lot to share and disseminate its information. It has an open data / access policy and aspires to share data, while placing high value on security and well-being of people it helps.

Max Weber on ethical neutrality in the social sciences

Finally finished a piece by Max Weber "The meaning of 'ethical neutrality' in sociology and economics" (Methodology of social sciences, 2011, google books link).

In this piece Weber asks whether the social sciences can be ethically neutral and what it means in terms of their research questions and methods. He addresses this issue by distinguishing between value-judgments and factual assertions. Value-judgments are evaluations of phenomena that can be satisfactory or unsatisfactory (positive or negative). They are derived from ethical principles or cultural ideals, which are subjective and therefore cannot be discussed scientifically. Factual statements are logically deducible and empirically observable. While the distinction between empirical statements and value-judgments is difficult to make, it is important according to Weber to keep making this distinction to maintain rigor in the social sciences. Avoiding taking a moral stand as part of one's research is what makes the social sciences science.

Weber's position is that education (and lectures as its ultimate manifestation in his times) should not be based on value-judgments. Students attend education institutions to cultivate their capacities for observation and reasoning, and a certain body of factual information. Evaluations, which cannot be contested in a lecture hall, should take place somewhere else. However, Weber writes that university decision-makers can decide which path to choose: to include value-judgments in education or not. It depends on whether they believe that education is about molding human beings and developing their political, ethical, and cultural attitudes, or whether it should focus on specialized training.

The methodological question in empirical sciences is not how to avoid value-judgments, but how to distinguish between them and empirical propositions and use both accordingly. Science can ask questions about things which convention makes self-evident. Evaluations (value-judgments) often seem self-evident. They can be examined by empirical sciences with respect to the conditions of their emergence and existence. This leads to an “understanding", i.e., a greater awareness of the issues and reasons for persistence of norms and opinions as well as conflicts. Empirical sciences can help to understand the means, the repercussions, and the conditioned competition of various evaluations, but choices between means, consequences and ultimately evaluations are matters of choice and compromise.

There is no (rational or empirical) scientific procedure of any kind whatsoever which can provide us with a decision here. The social sciences, which are strictly empirical sciences, are the least fitted to presume to save the individual the difficulty of making a choice, and they should therefore not create the impression that they can do so. - p. 19

One of the tasks of an empirically neutral social science is to analyze standpoints and reduce them to rational, internally consistent forms and investigate the pre-conditions of their existence and their implications. It can be done by using theoretical constructs, ideal types, which are pure fiction and should be used as such. Ideal types, or rationally correct and consistent Utopian constructions of patterns or behaviors are useful in comparing them with empirical reality in order to establish its divergences or similarities and to understand or explain them causally. Ideal types should not be used for establishing moral imperatives.

In theory, Weber's approach makes sense. Especially, when he talks about the danger of presenting value-judgments as factual statements and making them imperatives. It's obvious that mixing evaluations with facts makes a bad science. But what happens when we make a conscious choice to remain ethically neutral when studying sensitive issues or vulnerable populations? Also, if we become aware of means and repercussions of evaluations, why doesn't it help us to make better choices?

My "Taming the butterfly" speech

This week I'm participating in the "Taming the butterfly" game. It's a community-wide game organized by folks from SociaLens, a Bloomington start-up that promotes digital fluency.

The goal of the game is to "tame the butterfly", which wing flaps will affect our future, by proposing a vision of the future and a plan to realize this vision. Participants get some training in digital tools, communicate in small groups, solve puzzles, etc. At the end each group will present their vision in the Ignite format.

My role in this game is to be an expert in the area of mindset, which includes ethics, culture and expression of self. To stimulate participants thoughts on these issues, I wrote a short speech and delivered it via video at the opening session of the game. I'm re-posting my speech here on a separate page TTB speech.