My Career: Science, Research, Policy, and Ethics
Ethical Issues Related to Research and Technology
While I was at the National Science Foundation (NSF) during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, I spent much time on ethical issues related to the regulation of research with human subjects and issues connecting with the ethics of technology, under the auspices of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). I was the NSF ex officio representative to the National Human Research Protection Advisory Committee (NHRPAC) and the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP), established to provide advice to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on issues related to the protection of human research subjects. I was also the co-chair of the inter-agency National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Committee on Science (COS) Human Subjects Research Subcommittee (HSRS) overseen by OSTP, and was also the co-chair of the HSRS Behavioral Research Working Group. After leaving the NSF in 2003, I continued to be active on human subjects issues as they relate to public policy, including lecturing, writing, co-authoring with Judith Jarvis Thompson and others an AAUP report, participating in activities of the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, and serving on the advisory board of the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics.
I have been a long-time member of the Yale University Technology and Ethics working group and Yale's Science, Technology, and Utopian Visions (STUVWG) and Mind, Brain, Culture and Consciousness (MBCC) working groups, both hosted by Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center. I was a member of the Steering Committee of MBCC, which is no longer active.
I have also expressed concerns about the ethical and scientific oversight of the use of certain tools and techniques by the intelligence, law enforcement, military, and national security communities, considering some of them to be boondoggles. An example includes his serving as the Chair of the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Field Evaluation of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences-Based Methods and Tools for Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence. In a workshop report from that committee I provided an analysis of the use of voice stress technologies in the detection of deception and said "not only is there no evidence that voice stress technologies are effective in detecting stress, but also the hypothesis underlying their use has been shown to be false." I was also a member of the NRC Committee on Developing Metrics for Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Research.
On April 6, 2011, I provided testimony at a hearing of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Reform - Behavioral Science and Security: Evaluating TSA's SPOT Program (now BDA, Behavioral Detection and Analysis). In my written and oral congressional testimony, I criticized the TSA's SPOT passenger screening program, including raising concerns about the limitations that the Department of Homeland Security imposed on an outside review and oversight committee for the SPOT program, known as the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), of which I was a member. In my testimony, I said "TAC has not been asked to evaluate the overall SPOT program, the validity of indicators used in the program, consistency across measurement, field conditions, training issues, scientific foundations of the program and/or behavioral detection methodologies, etc. In order to appropriately scientifically evaluate a program like SPOT, all of these and more would be needed." I went on to say, "Shining a light on the process by making information on methodologies and results as open as possible (such as with devices like the polygraph, ..., voice stress analysis, and neuroimaging) is necessary for determining if these technologies and devices are performing in a known and reliable manner. Clearly establishing the scientific validity of underlying premises, foundations, primitives, is essential. The larger the base of comparable scientific studies, the easier it is to establish the validity of techniques and approaches. ... In our desire to protect our citizens from those who intend to harm us, we must make sure that our own behavior is not unnecessarily shaped by things like fear, urgency, institutional incentives or pressures, financial considerations, career and personal goals, the selling of snake oil, etc., that lead to the adoption of approaches that have not been sufficiently and appropriately scientifically vetted."
In May 2016, I was a signatory to an Open Letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) calling on them to move or postpone the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro over the 2016 epidemic of Zika fever. I also appeared on air on ESPN with Hannah Storm to discuss risk assessment and Zika.
See, also:
My Career: Science, Research, Policy, and Ethics
Ethical Issues Related to Research and Technology
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
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