My Answers to HW3case, Q3

 Facts of the case:

My case is derived from a scenario in the interactive video “The Lab”. I played as Aaron Hutchins, a Principal Investigator in a lab who is supervising several scientists. He has to find time to mentor his scientists while handling his research, teaching, and personal life. He discovers that one of his postdocs, Greg, has committed research fraud and he has to find a way to handle the accusation.

Analysis:

1.)     Greg didn’t set out to produce fraudulent research at first, he simply justified cutting corners when things got tough. Is this usually how unethical behavior starts? Do people just want to take the easy way out?

Answer: Yes, I think this is how unethical behavior frequently starts. I think most people want to think of themselves as good people and so don’t start out deliberately planning to do something wrong. I think its more likely that they rationalize what would be beneficial to themselves in the short term when they get tempted.

 

2.) Aaron helped his scientists act correctly in his lab by taking the time to mentor them. Do personal relationships with good people help us to remain ethical?

Answer: Yes, there is evidence that personal relationships can shape how we act under certain circumstances. They can help us gain feedback about our personal perceptions but also just act as a source of strength when things get tough. In the video we don’t see Aaron speaking with Greg much about his problems. It’s possible that might’ve contributed to Greg’s fraud.

 

3.) Scientists are under a lot of pressure to publish frequently in order to further their careers which may pressure them to behave unethically. Is a better system possible?

Answer: There probably is but I’m not aware of what the answer might be. There is a vibrant field called Metascience which asks how can we find better ways to do science. If we could somehow come up with a metric to measure research quality then that might be a better way to evaluate scientists than looking at the number of publications.

 

4.)  Aaron tried to foster a culture of openness and transparency in his lab in order to prevent problems from occurring. Can fostering this culture in other kinds of organizations prevent security problems from occurring?

Answer: I think so. The book “Engineering Trustworthy Systems” by O. Sami Saydjari speaks a lot about this topic He specifically calls out the harms that can come from keeping secrets and how secrecy can foster unethical behavior and impair security.

 

 

My conclusions:

While this scenario is fictional I think it provides a great illustration about the importance of culture in an organization and the kinds of working relationships people can develop. By staying involved in what was going on with his scientists he helped them to act correctly when they encountered difficulties. While the fraud Greg committed was bad he identified it before the damage could’ve gotten much worse. This kind of openness can be beneficial for security because it lets people identify problems in an organization much more easily.

Future environment:

Right now, the AI system ChatGPT has made a big impact for anyone involved in knowledge work. There is evidence that it will have an especially big impact for researchers. Over time its likely that it will get better and enable more aspects of research to be automated. While this would vastly improve productivity and enhance scientific discovery it might also lead to scientists taking credit for work they did not do.

Future scenario:

It’s likely that AI will be much more productive at scientific research that the scientists themselves. How then should we measure the effectiveness of researchers? This probably doesn’t seem serious to those outside the field but this is an important question for how governments and universities choose to allocate scarce resources for funding research. We will need to find some new ways to evaluate scientists and figure out new ways to support them. Generative AI systems will likely be able to generate more sophisticated fraud so it will probably be more difficult to identify misconduct as well.