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Data science students don’t know a lot about ethics — and that's a problem

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2021-09-13 14:30:14

An independent news and commentary website produced by academics and journalists. An independent news and commentary website produced by academics and journalists.

Undergraduate training for data scientists – dubbed the sexiest job of the 21st century by Harvard Business Review – falls short in preparing students for the ethical use of data science, our new study found.

Data science lies at the nexus of statistics and computer science applied to a particular field such as astronomy, linguistics, medicine, psychology or sociology. The idea behind this data crunching is to use big data to address otherwise unsolvable problems, such as how health care providers can create personalized medicine based on a patient’s genes and how businesses can make purchase predictions based on customers’ behavior.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 15% growth in data science careers over the period of 2019-2029, corresponding with an increased demand for data science training. Universities and colleges have responded to the demand by creating new programs or revamping existing ones. The number of undergraduate data science programs in the U.S. jumped from 13 in 2014 to at least 50 as of September 2020.

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