Ethics – Day 1
Marie Vendettuoli
July 1, 2011
Exercise
1. Indicate any group with which you selfidentify using a tick mark
2. Write one (1) new group that isn’t already on
the board that you self-identify with. Mark it
with a tick
3. Add ticks to the groups that others post, if
applicable
Discussion
How many groups did you identify with?
Are all of these by choice?
Are you happy that you are part of all these
groups?
Are there any groups you would not like to be
part of?
Discussion
How many people do you think self-identify with
the same set of groups?
How many groups exist with more than one
member?
Do all members agree? Always?
Diversity
What does diversity mean to you?
Yoon & Souza (2009) Different Visual Cognitive Styles, Different Problem-Solving Styles? Proceedings of the International Association of Society of Design Research.
http://www.siskiyous.edu/class/guid1/
Diversity
Even though a campus may become more diverse in terms of the numbers of underrepresented
groups present, the level of engagement can still be inconsequential if those representing
different viewpoints are not encouraged and supported to express them. . . . And if the
wariness about discomfort is stronger than the desire to hear different viewpoints because
engaging difference is uncomfortable, then the quest for diversity is hollow, no matter what
the demographic statistics on a campus reflect.
Ronald D. Liebowitz, President, Middlebury College
Salas, Goodwin and Burke (2008) Team effectiveness in complex organizations
Exercise:
Rate each on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree)
1. World hunger is a serious problem that needs attention.
2. Our country needs to address the growing number of
homeless.
3. The right to vote is one of the most valuable rights of
American citizens.
4. Our government should spend less money on nuclear
weapons and more on helping citizens better their lives.
Carkenord, D. M., & Bullington, J. (1993). Bringing cognitive dissonance to the classroom. Teaching of Psychology, 20, 41-43.
Exercise:
Indicate ‘yes’ if you perform a behavior on a regular basis
1.
Do you personally do anything to lessen world hunger
(e.g., donate money or food or write your
representative)?
2. Do you personally do anything to help the homeless (e.g.,
volunteer at a homeless shelter or donate money)?
3. Did you vote in the last election for which you were
eligible?
4. Do you personally convey your feelings to the government
(e.g., by writing your representative or by participating in
protests/marches)?
Carkenord, D. M., & Bullington, J. (1993). Bringing cognitive dissonance to the classroom. Teaching of Psychology, 20, 41-43.
In how many cases did your answers on the first
slide agree with the second?
How does it feel when answers align? Don’t
align? Are those feelings positive or negative?
• How will you resolve any negative feelings?
Carkenord, D. M., & Bullington, J. (1993). Bringing cognitive dissonance to the classroom. Teaching of Psychology, 20, 41-43.
Cognitive dissonance: uncomfortable feeling of
holding conflicting ideas simultaneously
Theory of Cognitive Dissonance: People are
motivated to reduce dissonance
Change ….
Or …
belief
justify
attitude
blame
action
deny
Carkenord, D. M., & Bullington, J. (1993). Bringing cognitive dissonance to the classroom. Teaching of Psychology, 20, 41-43.
How does your response to cognitive
dissonance affect team psychological safety?
Repulsion and diversity post
• Do you think that the author intended for her
argument to appear weak and contradictory?
• Do you think that the author intended to insult
her people who have positive relationships with
their pets? Why or why not?
• How could the argument be reframed from a
perspective of cognitive dissonance? Can your
own responses be reframed after considering the
Theory of Cognitive Dissonance?
When different priorities exist,
how do you know who is right?
Guidelines for ethical decision-making
Find a balance between all stakeholders. How easy is this?
Winer, E. Ethics in Engineering Design
Case Study: The Ford Pinto
• Late 1960’s, demand for subcompact cars was rising
“The Pinto was not to weigh an ounce over 2,000 pounds
and not cost a cent over $2,000”. - L. Iacocca
Crash test revealed
a serious defect in
the gas tank
What to do?
Image: wikipedia
Winer, E. Ethics in Engineering Design
Case Study: The Ford Pinto
Other pressures -• Design timeline was accelerated from 43 months to about 25
months
• The company culture did not want engineers warranting
safety as a concern
• “Safety doesn’t sell” - L. Iacocca
Winer, E. Ethics in Engineering Design
Case Study: The Ford Pinto
When deciding whether to fix the problem, Ford
performed a cost-benefit analysis.
Number of vehicles affected
Modification cost per vehicle
Total cost to fix:
Number of Deaths
Settlement per death
Number of Serious Injury
Settlement per serious injury
12.5 million
$11.00
$137.5 million
180
$200,000.00
180
$67,000.00
Number of burned out vehicles
2100
Settlement per vehicle
$700
Total cost to not fix:
$49.53 million
Winer, E. Ethics in Engineering Design
Case Study: The Ford Pinto
• There was a solution that would have cost $5.08 per
vehicle. It was not implemented.
• A California jury awarded $128 million from an accident
involving a Pinto (1979)
• Ford Motor Company became the first American
corporation indicted and prosecuted on criminal homicide
charges (1979)
• Ford Crown Victoria was found to have a similar fuel tank
problem (2002)
Winer, E. Ethics in Engineering Design
Case Study: The Ford Pinto
Was Ford wrong to do a cost benefit analysis?
Why or why not?
Other opinions
(technical / non-tech)
What happens when one stakeholder’s perspective is
weighed more heavily?
Case Study: Edward Wegman
Case Study: Edward Wegman
In 2005, Wegman was asked by
Congress to investigate the validity
of the “hockey stick” graph, which
presents research findings
supporting global warming
Image: Wikipedia
Case Study: Edward Wegman
Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the
decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and
that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be
supported by his analysis.
… tree ring proxies are typically calibrated to remove low frequency
variations. The cycle of Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age
that was widely recognized in 1990 has disappeared from the
MBH98/99 analyses, thus making possible the hottest
decade/hottest year claim. However, the methodology of
MBH98/99 suppresses this low frequency information. The paucity
of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium
claims essentially unverifiable
Wegman, Scott, Said AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORT ON THE HOCKEY STICK’ GLOBAL CLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf
Original text:
. These are
seasonal growth increments produced by
meristematic tissues in the tree's cambium.
When view in detail (Fig. 10.1), it is clear that
they are made up of sequences of large, thinwalled cells (earlywood) and more densely
packed, thick-walled cells (latewood).
Collectively, each couplet of earlywood and
latewood comprises an annual growth
increment, more commonly called a tree ring.
The mean width of a ring in any one tree is a
function of many variables, including the tree
species, tree age, availability of stored food
within the tree and of important nutrients in
the soil, and a whole complex of climatic factors
(sunshine, precipitation, temperature, wind
speed, humidity, and their distribution
throughout the year). The problem facing
dendroclimatologists is to extract whatever
climatic signal is available in the tree ring data
and to distinguish from the background noise.
Wegman Report (p12):
A cross section of a temperate forest
tree shows variation of lighter and
darker bands that are usually
continuous around the circumference
of the tree. These bands are the socalled tree rings and are due to seasonal
effects. Each tree ring is composed of
large thin-walled cells called early
wood and smaller more densely packed
thick walled cells called late wood. The
average width of a tree ring is a
function of many variables including
the tree species, tree age, stored
carbohydrates in the tree, nutrients in
the soil, and climatic factors including
sunlight, precipitation, temperature,
wind speed, humidity, and even carbon
dioxide availability in the atmosphere.
Obviously there are many confounding
factors so the problem is to extract the
temperature signal and to distinguish
the temperature signal from the noise
caused by the many confounding
factors.
Case Study: Edward Wegman
•
tasked a Ph.D. student, Denise Reeves, to prepare the boilerplate. Reeves was no
expert: her knowledge of social networks came from having taken a short course
on the topic. Reeves writes the boilerplate "within a few days" and Wegman writes
"of course, I took that to be her original work.”
•
Wegman gave this boilerplate to a second student, Walid Sharabati, who included
it in his Ph.D. dissertation "with only minor amendments.”
•
Sharabati was a coauthor of the Computational Statistics and Data Analysis article.
He took the material he'd copied from Reeves's report and stuck it in to the CSDA
article
Case Study: Edward Wegman
• Wegman, Scott and Said. Ad Hoc Committee
Report on the ‘Hockey Stick’ Global Climate
Reconstruction Congressional Report
• Said, Wegman, Sharabati, and Rigsby. Social
networks of author–coauthor relationships
Computational Statistics and Data Analysis
• Said, Wegman. Color Theory and Design
WIREs Computational Statistics
• Said, Sharabati, Rezazad. Dissertations
What is plagiarism?
How does knowing the literature reduce
plagiarism?
Describe the role of each party in the Wegman
case. What could they have done differently?
Describe the purpose of peer review. What choices
did reviewers make that contributed to the
severity of the Wegman case?
How likely is this scenario to repeat? Individual
elements?
What does it mean to be a ‘good citizen’ of the
academic community?
Exercise: Alpha Motor Company
Describe the ethical dilemma. Was it handled
well? Why or why not?
What are the options for future action?
Consequences of each option?
Case Study: Elizabeth Goodwin
Research hypothesis: gene laf-1 in C. elegans
affects sexual determination by encoding
small RNA
Problem: Preliminary research showed
inconclusive results and weak correlation.
Case Study: Elizabeth Goodwin
Grant: 2R01GM051836-13
• Falsified Figures 5A and 5B by reusing figures from two of her earlier
published papers and falsely labeling them to claim results that had not
been achieved in her laboratory.
• Falsified Figure 7B by reusing a figure from one of her published papers
and both relabeling it to claim she had detected the STAR-2 protein rather
than the TRA-l protein actually detected and modifying the image in the
application to disguise its origin.
• Falsified Figure 8C by using a figure produced by one of her students and
relabeled it to show that RNAi treatment of C. elegans led to increased
expression of the TRA-2 protein when this result had not been obtained by
the student.
• Falsified the table on Page 20 of the application showing phenotypic
frequencies of worms expressing star-2 (ok483) mutants by significantly
overstating the level of aberrant phenotypes and fabricating certain
categories of phenotypes not seen by the student conducting the
research.
http://writedit.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/findings-of-scientific-misconduct-9/
Case Study: Elizabeth Goodwin
Grant: 1R01GM073183-01
• Falsified Figure 5 because she used the same two lanes in both
Figure 5 and Figure 7, although they were flipped horizontally in
one of the figures to disguise their reuse. In Figure 7, the lanes
illustrated an effect on laf-1 during developmental stages of C.
elegans, and in Figure 5, the same lanes purportedly illustrated an
effect on laf-1 noncoding RNA. A witness testified that the result in
Figure 5 had not been observed, while that in Figure 7 had,
indicating that the claims for Figure 5 were falsified.
• Falsified Figure 8 by reusing photographs prepared by a student
that identified the location of rRas-l expression in adult worms and
claiming instead that the images illustrated the location of laf-1
mRNA. The images had been enlarged and cropped to disguise their
location.
http://ori.dhhs.gov/misconduct/cases/Goodwin_Elizabeth.shtml
Case Study: Elizabeth Goodwin
• Graduate Student saw incorrect figures and
claims of experiments not performed on a
grant application
• Grad students as a group decided to ask Dr
Goodwin for clarification
• Notified department chair
• Formal investigation, UW-M
• Investigation, FBI
Case Study: Elizabeth Goodwin
• Fine: $500
• Restitution
$50,000 Dept of Health and Human Services
$50,000 University of Wisconsin, Madison Scholarship
Programs
• Exclusion from contracting or subcontracting with U.S.
Government for three years
• Exclusion from peer review, board or advisory
committee associated with U.S. Public Health Services
• Two years probation
• Resigned
Case Study: Elizabeth Goodwin
Graduate Student, Chantal Ly
• Completed 7 years of PhD at time of
misconduct
• Was told that her work was not usable and
had to find a new research topic
• Left graduate school
Case Study: Elizabeth Goodwin
• 2 students quit graduate school, found lab
jobs
• 1 student transferred to another school
• 1 student switched to a law program
• 2 are finishing PhDs at UW-M
Case Study: Elizabeth Goodwin
Grad students still at UW-M:
• Jacqueline Baca, in early stage of degree, was
transferred to another lab
• Amy Hubert, an advanced student defended 2
years later
– Dissertation based on research she did after
disagreeing with Goodwin
Case Study: Elizabeth Goodwin
Describe various actions to take upon discovery
of falsification. What are the consequences?
What are the pressures that whistleblowers
face? Is it better to keep quiet or have high
standards?
What is falsification of data? How much editing
is okay?
Privacy
How do you manage your online presence? Why
is this important?
In our daily lives
• Music/movie downloading – is it okay? Why or
why not?
• What is net neutrality? Why is this an
important issue?
Social Justice
• Why should we care? What does ‘social
justice’ mean in terms of HCI?
• What is the digital divide? How does new
technology encourage or reduce this gap?
• What does it mean to design for accessibility?
When is it too expensive to do so?
Homework
due Thurs, July 7
Research and respond to the following two cases:
1. Mattel Toy Corp.
2. Space Shuttle Challenger
For each, provide:
(a) your opinion of whether it was handled correctly or not correctly
(b) defend your position with data
(c) identify what should have been done (supported with data)
Find a case that seems interesting at: http://ori.dhhs.gov/misconduct/cases/
(a) summarize the case
(b) provide your opinion of whether it was handled correctly or not
correctly
(c) respond to two other interns’ case descriptions
Watch and respond to this video: http://youtu.be/vtdJ4uUTGdo
Note: this CBC News clip is contains language that has been bleeped out; this occurs in the last 9 seconds of the video
only.