ISI Declaration on Professional Ethics
The likely consequences of collecting and disseminating various types of data should be considered and explored, and efforts made to guard against predictable misinterpretation or misuse.
Findings
should be communicated for the benefit of the widest possible community, yet
attempt to ensure no harm to any population group..
Statisticians should uphold their professional integrity without fear or favor, only selecting and using methods designed to produce the most accurate results, and presenting all the findings openly, completely, and in a transparent manner regardless of the outcomes. Statisticians should be particularly sensitive to the need to present findings when they challenge a preferred outcome.
3. Clarifying Obligations and Roles
The respective obligations of employer, client, or funder and statistician in regard to the roles and responsibility of each
should be spelled out and fully understood in advance. In providing advice or guidance,
statisticians should take care to stay within their area of competence, and seek
advice, as appropriate, from others with the relevant expertise.
4. Assessing Alternatives Impartially
5. Avoiding Preempted Outcomes
6. Guarding Privileged Information
Privileged information is to be kept confidential. This prohibition is not to be extended to statistical methods and procedures utilized to conduct the inquiry or produce published data.
7. Exhibiting Professional Competence
Statisticians shall seek to upgrade their professional knowledge and skills, and shall maintain awareness of technological developments, procedures, and standards which are relevant to their field, and shall encourage others to do the same.
8. Maintaining Confidence in Statistics
In order to promote and preserve the confidence of the public, statisticians should ensure that they accurately and correctly describe their results, including the explanatory power of their data. It is incumbent upon statisticians to alert potential users of the results to the limits of their reliability and applicability.
9. Exposing and Reviewing Methods and
Findings
Adequate information should be provided to the public to permit the methods, procedures, techniques, and findings to be assessed independently.
10. Communicating Ethical Principles
In collaborating with colleagues and others in the same or other disciplines, it is necessary and important to ensure that the ethical principles of all participants are clear, understood, respected, and reflected in the undertaking.
11. Bearing Responsibility for the Integrity of the Discipline
Statisticians are subject to the general moral rules of scientific and scholarly
conduct: they should not deceive or knowingly misrepresent or attempt to prevent
reporting of misconduct or obstruct the scientific/scholarly research of others
The intrusive potential of some forms of statistical inquiry requires that they be undertaken only with great care, full justification of need, and notification of those involved.
Statistical inquiries involving the active participation of human subjects should be based, as far as practicable, on their freely given, informed consent, including their entitlement to understand the mandatory/voluntary status of their participation and the ability to refuse for whatever reason. Participation should be as informed as possible, and information that might affect the willingness to participate should not be withheld.
14. Protecting the Interests of Subjects
Statisticians are obligated to protect subjects, individually and collectively, insofar as possible, against potentially harmful effects of participating, both to the subjects themselves and to their relationships with their environment. This responsibility is not absolved either by consent or the legal requirement to participate.
15. Maintaining Confidentiality of Records
The identities and records of all subjects or respondents, cooperating or not, should be kept confidential, whether or not confidentiality has been explicitly pledged.
16. Inhibiting Disclosure of Identity
Appropriate measures should be utilized to prevent data from being published or otherwise released in a form that would allow a subject or respondent’s identity to be disclosed or inferred.