Navigating Values in Scientific Recommendations

Values play important roles in science, yet their influence on ethical and scientific recommendations is overlooked. This paper examines how interactions between values complicate the uptake of recommendations. We discuss two challenges: (i) value trade-offs, where one value is pursued at the cost of another, and (ii) value synergies, where values reinforce each other. We argue that overlooking trade-offs leads to unrealistic recommendations, while oversimplifying synergies leads to ineffective ones. Both hinder the uptake of recommendations. We propose strategies to address these issues, illustrated by the 2023 National Academies of Sciences report on the use of population descriptors in genomics.