---
title: "Ethics in mathematics"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_in_mathematics"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:23:02.711795+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Ethics in pure mathematical research ==
The American Mathematical Society publishes a code of ethical guidelines for mathematical researchers. The responsibilities of researchers include being knowledgeable in the field, avoiding plagiarism, giving credit, publishing without unreasonable delay, and correcting errors. The European Mathematical Society Ethics Committee also publishes a code of practice relating to the publication, editing and refereeing of research.
It has been argued that as pure mathematical research is relatively harmless, it raises few urgent ethical issues. However, that raises the question of whether and why pure mathematics is ethically worth doing, given that it consumes the lives of many highly intelligent people who could be making more immediately useful contributions.
The study of ethical challenges in pure mathematics is deeply connected to the philosophy of mathematical practice. Arguments against the ethical neutrality of pure mathematical work often builds on the social constitution, i.e. the socio-cultural context of the research and the many decisions involved in mathematical proofs. The problem of epistemic injustice in mathematical research is actively discussed in this context.

== Parallels between ethics and mathematics ==
Ethics and mathematics both appear to rely on reasoning from intuition, unlike empirical sciences which rely fundamentally on observations and experiments. That has been suggested as a reason in support of objectivity or moral realism in ethics, since arguments against objectivity in ethics are paralleled by arguments against objectivity in mathematics, which is generally believed to be false.
Justin Clarke-Doane argues to the contrary that although mathematics and ethics are closely parallel, a pluralist attitude should be taken to the truths of both. Just as the parallel postulate is true in Euclidean geometry but false in non-Euclidean geometry, so ethical propositions can be true or false in different systems.

== Teaching ethics in mathematics ==
Courses in the ethics of mathematics remain rare. The University of New South Wales taught a compulsory course on Professional Issues and Ethics in Mathematics in its mathematics degrees from 1998 to 2012. In 2023, the ETH Zurich taught an optional seminar on ethics in mathematics and a non-examinable seminar also exists at the University of Cambridge. A mini-seminar has also been taught at Swarthmore College. 
Many courses considering ethics in mathematics also appear under different names, e.g. "mathematics for social justice."
Similar approaches can also be found in the teaching of ethics to computer science students, where the term "embedded ethics" has established itself for the integration of ethics teaching into the curriculum. These programmes are currently explored at Harvard University, Stanford University and other places.  

== See also ==
Big data ethics – Ethics of mass data analytics
Critical mathematics pedagogy – Liberation-focused math education
Essentially contested concept – Problem in philosophy
Ethical calculus – Application of mathematics to calculate issues in ethics
Ethics of artificial intelligence
Ethics of quantification
Misuse of statistics – Use of statistical arguments to assert falsehoods
Prosecutor's fallacy – Logic error due to ignoring the base ratePages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
Type I and type II errors – Concepts from statistical hypothesis testing
Type III error – Term in statistical hypothesis testing
Unintended consequences – Unforeseen outcomes of an action

== Notes ==

== References ==

== External links ==
Cambridge University Ethics in Mathematics Society
American Mathematical Society: Policy Statement on Ethical Guidelines
Royal Statistical Society: Statistics and the Law.