“…so many of the data scientists that are in work right now think of themselves as technicians and think that they can blithely follow textbook definitions of optimisation, without considering the wider consequences of their work. So, when they choose to optimise to some kind of ratio of false positives or false negatives, for example, they are not required by their bosses or their educational history to actually work out what that will mean to the people affected by the algorithms they’re optimising. Which means that they don’t really have any kind of direct connection to the worldly consequences of their work.”

“…we think that data people are magical and that they have any kind of wisdom. What they actually have is a technical ability without wisdom.”

Source: To work for society, data scientists need a hippocratic oath with teeth | WIRED UK