📄Handouts → ⚖️Ethical Frameworks Guide
Senior Science Pūtaiao / Science

Science • Senior secondary • Ethical reasoning

Ethical Frameworks Guide for Socio-scientific Issues

Ethical analysis is stronger than listing “pros and cons”. Use several lenses, distinguish evidence from values, identify who carries risk or authority, and explain why reasonable people can reach different conclusions from the same scientific evidence.

First separate four different things

  1. Scientific evidence: what observations, data or well-supported explanations show.
  2. Uncertainty: what is not known, how confident the evidence is, and what could change the conclusion.
  3. Values: what people judge to be important, harmful, fair, sacred, acceptable or worth protecting.
  4. Authority: who has standing to make, consent to, govern or refuse a decision—not merely who has an opinion about it.

A scientific fact can inform an ethical decision. It cannot, by itself, decide what society ought to do.

1. Consequences

Question: What benefits and harms are likely, to whom, how large, and for how long?

  • Include indirect and long-term effects.
  • Do not count only the number of people affected; severity matters.
  • State uncertainty rather than turning a forecast into a fact.

2. Rights and duties

Question: What must people be allowed to choose, know or refuse, and what obligations do institutions or researchers carry?

  • Consider informed consent, privacy and bodily autonomy where relevant.
  • Ask whether a desirable outcome is being achieved by an unacceptable means.

3. Justice and fairness

Question: Who receives the benefits, who carries the costs or risks, and is that distribution defensible?

  • Look for groups excluded from access or over-exposed to risk.
  • Past disadvantage can matter to what fair treatment requires now.

4. Care and relationships

Question: What responsibilities arise because people, communities and environments are interdependent?

  • Notice vulnerability and dependency.
  • Ask what a decision does to trust, relationships and ongoing responsibilities.

5. Precaution and reversibility

Question: When evidence is incomplete, how serious and reversible would a mistake be?

  • Low-probability harm can still matter if consequences are severe or irreversible.
  • Precaution does not mean “never act”; compare the risks of action and inaction.

6. Public reason and accountability

Question: Can the decision, evidence and trade-offs be explained openly to the people affected?

  • Who funded or benefits from the evidence?
  • What conflicts of interest need disclosure?
  • What review or appeal is possible?

Cultural and collective authority boundary

This general guide does not claim to state a Māori, iwi or hapū position on biotechnology, genetics, environmental intervention or any other issue. If a case engages taonga, whakapapa, mātauranga, whenua, wai, tikanga, iwi/hapū interests or Te Tiriti relationships, do not manufacture “the Māori perspective” from a generic concept list.

Use the sourced material and local authority identified by your kaiako. Record whose position is being represented, what evidence supports that attribution, and what remains for consultation or handoff.

Stakeholder and authority map

Person / groupWhat matters to them?Evidence / expertiseDecision or consent authority?Risk / benefit carried

Important: being affected, being expert, being elected, owning intellectual property, and holding cultural/collective authority are different relationships. Do not collapse them into one “stakeholder” category without explanation.

Framework comparison matrix

Issue / decision:

LensBest argument supportingBest argument opposing / limitingEvidence needed
Consequences
Rights / duties
Justice / fairness
Care / relationships
Precaution / reversibility
Accountability

Build a justified position

  1. Claim: State the decision or policy you support, oppose or condition.
  2. Evidence: Name the scientific evidence that matters most.
  3. Ethical reasoning: Apply at least two lenses and explain why they matter.
  4. Counterargument: Present the strongest reasonable objection, not a weak version.
  5. Response: Explain whether the objection changes, limits or strengthens your position.
  6. Uncertainty / authority: State what is not settled and who must still be heard or give authority/consent.

My position:

Strongest counterargument:

What could change my conclusion?

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