The Cambridge Analytica case: What’s a data scientist to do?

The Cambridge Analytica controversy has highlighted data ethics issues especially dear to early career stage data scientists. The recent controversy about Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data to, allegedly, influence the 2016 US presidential election and, possibly, the UK EU referendum raises an ethical issue, especially for data scientists newly minted from UK universities. Should you take a job with any company that seems to be capitalising on personal data in areas that regulation does not yet reach? “Just because you can does not mean you should” is a commonly expressed idea in the data science community. But what does it mean in practical terms? The data science community in Scotland seems to be flourishing, in part due to the efforts of the Scottish government-supported innovation agency The Data Lab, which runs the annual Data Fest event.