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Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

Ethics Cases

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Find case studies and scenarios on a variety of fields in applied ethics.

Cases can also be viewed by the following categories:

Bioethics

Business Ethics

Engineering Ethics

ESG Topics

Ethical Issues for Students

Government Ethics

Immigration Ethics

Internet Ethics

Journalism Ethics 

Leadership Ethics

Social Sector Ethics

Technology Ethics

For permission to reprint cases, submit requests to ethics@scu.edu.

Looking to draft your own case studies? This template provides the basics for writing ethics case studies in technology (though with some modification it could be used in other fields as well).

 

 

All Cases

  • Learning from Tay’s Encounter with Social Media
    An Ethics Case Study

    What can we learn from the Tay experience, about AI and social media ethics more broadly?

  • Emotion Recognition and Smart Cities
    An Ethics Case Study

    Who should be consulted before using emotion-recognition AI to report on constituents’ sentiments?

  • Automation and Accountability
    An Ethics Case Study

    When 'algorithm alchemy' wrongly accuses people of fraud, who is accountable?

  • SuperFly
    A VR Ethics Case Study

    Which stakeholders might benefit from a new age of VR “travel”? Which stakeholders might be harmed?

  • Crisis Data
    An AI Ethics Case Study

    Ethical questions about data collection, data-sharing, access, use, and privacy.

  • Robinhood, Reddit, and GameStop: What Happened and What Should Happen Next?

    Case study on the history making GameStop short and stock price surge that occurred during January 2021.

  • Mahomes' Brother Celebration Video on TikTok Draws Ire

    Patrick Mahomes’ younger brother danced on the painted number of deceased Washington Football Team player Sean Taylor and it’s posing ethical questions.

  • Making Vulnerabilities Visible
    A Cybersecurity Ethics Case Study

    As PunkSpider is pending re-release, ethical issues are considered about a tool that is able to spot and share vulnerabilities on the web, opening those results to the public.

  • URVR
    A VR Ethics Case Study

    With URVR recipients can capture and share 360 3D moments and live them out together.

  • VR Rage Room
    A VR Ethics Case Study

    VR rage rooms may provide therapeutic and inexpensive benefits while also raising ethical questions.