Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34509981›Full record

ArticleJournal of medical ethics2023

Digital bioethics: introducing new methods for the study of bioethical issues.

Manuel Schneider, Effy Vayena, Alessandro Blasimme

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of medical ethics, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
7citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Digital bioethics: exploring an emerging field.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2026
    Article
  3. Bioethics-in-Science : An Invitation.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2026
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Manuel SchneiderHealth Ethics and Policy Lab, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9645-8723
Effy VayenaHealth Ethics and Policy Lab, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Alessandro BlasimmeHealth Ethics and Policy Lab, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland alessandro.blasimme@hest.ethz.ch.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The online space has become a digital public square, where individuals interact and share ideas on the most trivial to the most serious of matters, including discussions of controversial ethical issues in science, technology and medicine. In the last decade, new disciplines like computational social science and social data science have created methods to collect and analyse such data that have considerably expanded the scope of social science research. Empirical bioethics can benefit from the integration of such digital methods to investigate novel digital phenomena and trace how bioethical issues take shape online.Here, using concrete examples, we demonstrate how novel methods based on digital approaches in the social sciences can be used effectively in the domain of bioethics. We show that a digital turn in bioethics research aligns with the established aims of empirical bioethics, integrating with normative analysis and expanding the scope of the discipline, thus offering ways to reinforce the capacity of bioethics to tackle the increasing complexity of present-day ethical issues in science and technology. We propose to call this domain of research in bioethics

Indexed as

ethicsinformation technologyscientific research

Identifiers

PMID34509981
PMCPMC10646908

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.