• Question: Does your personal ethics code change anything about the job that you do?

    Asked by raushan to Amy, Drew, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 20 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by priya.
    • Photo: Sara Imari Walker

      Sara Imari Walker answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hi raushan. For me personally no. I don’t feel as though my personal ethics have a lot of bearing on what I do. Most of my work is theoretical so it doesn’t directly confront “right” or “wrong” ethical issues. However I do ask some deep questions, and sometimes that can philosophically be tough to cope with!

    • Photo: Drew Rae

      Drew Rae answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hi Raushan and Priya. Very interesting question. I guess I can only answer by explaining my personal ethics first. I am a skeptic, which means that I believe that beliefs should be backed by empirical evidence where-ever possible, and a quasi-consequentialist, which means that I believe that expected outcomes are the judge of good and bad actions. This places me at odds with prevailing practice in my area of research, where there is a lot of trust in mathematical answers and logical reasoning.

      I find myself looking at conclusions that have been well-established in engineering for a long time, and asking “Show me the evidence. No, not the mathematical reasoning, show me the actual evidence!”. This may seem strange, but lots of research work is done without experiments, even when it should be done with them.

    • Photo: Julia Griffen

      Julia Griffen answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Ethics and personal opinions are very important… I wouldn’t have chosen my research project if I didn’t believe it in.. You can detach yourself but at the end of the day… Us scientists are human.. we do have a heart believe in things and have our own ethics!

    • Photo: Kimberley Bryon

      Kimberley Bryon answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      For me, it doesn’t because I chose to work with worms. I guess I wouldn’t have felt entirely comfortable doing mouse work so I didn’t consider a project that would make me feel conflicted.

    • Photo: Amy MacQueen

      Amy MacQueen answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      I think that my personal ethics changes everything about the job that I do – in the sense that what you believe affects the way that you behave…from the way you present your data to the way you interact with the ladies who wash up your dirty bottles!

      Having said this there are not many direct conflicts that have caused me to change the actual job that I do – but there are lots of little things about the way I do things that are definitely affected by my “ethical code”! 🙂

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