About the Chair
The Canada Research Chair in Data Ethics was established in 2019 with funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program. It is dedicated to the study of the ethical and social dimensions of data collection and data use in scientific research, healthcare, and policy. The Chair is held by Eran Tal, Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy at McGill University.
News and Events
New society for the study of measurement
Society dedicated to promoting research and teaching on measurement
- The Society for the Study of Measurement (SSM) held its inaugural meeting at UC Berkeley in 2024
- Co-founded by the Chairholder
- The SSM is an interdisciplinary home for scientists, philosophers, historians, and others who study foundational issues in measurement
- Stay tuned for SSM 2026 at the University of South Carolina
Data ethics and mental health
How to collect, interpret, and use mental health data responsibly?
- Talk recordings are now available from a workshop organized by the Chairholder in October 2023
- A Brain Canada-funded collaboration between the Chairholder and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health is underway to establish a data governance framework for youth mental health
- New study on values in psychosocial measurement in collaboration with mental health service Foundry is now published in Measurement
Algorithmic bias and medical decision making
Are ML-based decision support tools aligned with the interests of patients?
- Prediction targets in supervised machine learning are often inadequately specified
- A new paper explores this ‘target specification bias’ and its hidden implications for fairness in medical contexts
- Follow-up work will compare different operationalizations of health justice for machine learning
Canada Research Chair in Data Ethics 