Showing posts with label ethics in engineering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethics in engineering. Show all posts

Sunday, 15 January 2012

Anecdotal evidence "To report your observations does not qualify for research outcome"





Evidencia anecdotal "Reportar observaciones no califica como trabajo de investigación"








On a former post, I pointed out the benefits of forests by citing the opinion of a biologist. Then, I tried to reinforce his position on the topic through by presenting a graph I used in my former work (Figure above-link to my post). About it, I said that I found out that forests have played a fundamental role as a countermeasure against global warming, because they have kept stable the temperature of the surface of a region covered by tropical forests in the Andes (upper Amazon basin). Before thinking that such snapshot provides a relevant scientific finding, I invite you to check back the blog post I mention to read that I also point out that such finding has not yet been published because the findings have not yet been "certified" through field measurements. Without such certification, my "findings" simply constitute "anecdotal evidence", which in the words of my former imply that: "To report your observations does not qualify for research outcome".

Monday, 20 June 2011

Education: "Adjusting" the results of your work: ???

Educación: ¿"Ajustando" los resultados de tu trabajo?

Following my previous post, early this morning I found this news on Fox:

Changing tides: Research center under fire for "adjusted" sea-level data

Sometimes, researchers may "adjust" their results in order to better explain the potential consequences of their outcomes, but it is difficult to believe that they would adjust their results pursuing some dark objective.

Sunday, 19 June 2011

Education: Publish your computer code!!! A matter of productivity and ethics.

Educación: Publica el código de tu programa!! Cuestión de productividad y ética
Pirating: An accepted "profession"?

I have recently read two short entries on Nature.com published in 2010 that discuss on the relevance of publishing computer codes for the development of life sciences. The former is a comment written by Anthony Fejes (link on blogs.nature.com) on the post of Nick Barnes entitled "Publish your computer code: it is good enough", and I agree with both and with most of the comments posted by several readers on reference to the main article.

The question is: should your computer code be published? Next are summarized some reasons that are commonly given for not publishing a code. Those reasons were cited by Barnes, Fejes, and the comments that followed Barne´s article. Please analyze them, since they may be useful when discussing with your students on matters of research productivity, and even in matters of ethics.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...