As case studies from medicine, epidemiology, economics, climate science, and many other fields show, oftentimes policy decisions are driven not simply by the underlying science, but by the way in which that science is presented.  In this paper, Dr. Schroeder looks at some of the hardest cases of this sort:  cases where alternative presentations of the same information meet the basic requirements of scientific ethics (honesty, transparency, etc.).  He proposes a framework, modeled after informed consent requirements in clinical bioethics, that scientists can use in deciding between alternative ways to present their results, and argues that it generalizes to a range of other issues in scientific ethics.

Andrew Schroeder is an associate professor of philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, currently on leave as a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at Princeton's University Center for Human Values.  His research and teaching cover a range of issues in ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of science, with a special focus on problems that lie at their intersection.  He is currently working on two projects:  a short book on disability, and a series of paper on the presentation of scientific information.