It deals with the professional responsibilities of mathematicians whose work influences decisions with major consequences, such as in law, finance, the military, and environmental science.
[6] While the assumptions written into metrics often reflect the worldview of the groups who are responsible for designing them, they are harder for non-experts to challenge, leading to injustices.
[7] As mathematicians can enter the workforce of industrialised nations in many places that are no longer limited to teaching and academia, scholars have made the argument that it is necessary to add ethical training into the mathematical curricula at universities.
Mathematicians have a professional responsibility to support the ethical use of mathematics in practice, both to sustain the reputation of the profession and to protect society from the impacts of unethical behavior.
For example, mathematics is extensively applied in the use of Big Data in Artificial Intelligence applications, both by mathematicians and non-mathematicians, with complex impacts that are not readily understood or anticipated.
Due to uncertainties that mathematical models deal with, and challenges in drawing and communicating any conclusions, there is a possibility of mathematicians misleading the clients as they are not generally aware of quantitative techniques.
[22] Priority and attribution of mathematical discovery are important to professional practice,[23] even as some theorems bear the name of the person making the conjecture rather than finding the proof.
The responsibilities of researchers include being knowledgeable in the field, avoiding plagiarism, giving credit, publishing without unreasonable delay, and correcting errors.
[25] The European Mathematical Society Ethics Committee also publishes a code of practice relating to the publication, editing and refereeing of research.
[27] 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.