Knowledge production and management

The creators of big data applications play a central role in developing and maintaining ethical guidelines and practices, both general and domain specific. In addition to the project Regulating big data research, two other NRP75 projects studied how big data impacts the research and knowledge professions. The legal, ethical, and social questions surrounding big data also extend to the natural sciences. As such, interdisciplinary approaches are needed to contend with large and novel datasets. The inclusion of persons in matters that affect them must be improved. Inclusiveness is part of a fundamental change in the production of scientific knowledge as well as in the understanding of the structures and mechanisms involved in maintaining and changing knowledge domains. Data and visual literacy as well as computational thinking competences are crucial for extended participation in knowledge production endeavours (Big data in practice). The variety of research on big data means ethical issues cannot be addressed by overarching one-size-fits all regulation. Context and deliberation should be emphasised, not inflexible standardisation (Regulating big data research). The interdependency of legal, ethical, and social issues, and the involvement of different cultures, calls for interdisciplinary, international research. Science employs big data analytics in a variety of ways, including synthesising data points, making predictions and discovering relationships. The results of these analyses come with numerous uncertainties, which must be assessed, quantified and properly communicated if the results are to be trusted and used (Uncertainty in big data).