Seminar 1

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E. Dyachuk, K. Haikonen, K. Kovi, L. Saarinen, L. Sjökvist

Technology, research and ethics

E. Dyachuk, K. Haikonen, K. Kovi, L. Saarinen, L. Sjökvist

Division of Electricity

Dept. of Engineering Sciences

Uppsala University

Sweden

Themes

• Responsibility

• Statistics and Errors

• Conflicts

Responsibility

Prosecution:

•Alledge the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake

•Did the scientists weight up all the risks, and communicate these clearly to those seeking advice?

•”We just wanted to be warned that we were sitting on a bomb”

Defendants:

•Not possible be precise about the timing of future events. 30 sec. warning is possible.

•The best science can do is talk in terms of risk and of probabilities

•Seismologists have been saying since 1998 that it is a high risk area.

Responsibility

• What is the scientists responsibility?

• -Did they make the right decision or should the have warned the public, with the risk of crying wolf?

• Communicating scientific results is called ”the third mission” of swedish universities, but how to communicate that ”low risk” does not mean ”not dangerous”?

Statistics and errors: Reproducibility

• Examples from drug research:– 6 out of 53 studies on cancer were possible to

reproduce– ¼ av 67 seminal studies

• Examples from machine learning:– Overfitting– Estimation: ¼ of results can be reproduced

• Examples from publishing in general:– Reviewers pick up 2 of 8 deliberate mistakes (British

medical journal)– An article with several obvious errors is accepted by

½ of the journals it was submitted to (biology/cancer)

Errors and statistical power

Good research practice

• Disclose sources of error

• Use blinded data

• Publish also negative results

• Reproduction studies are important

• Thorough peer review very important

• ”Minimal-threshold journals” which demand good scientific quality but not that the research is ”new” and ”significant”

Conflicts

• Scandal at Uppsala University, 2007– The scandal– Public reaction

Conflicts

• Mail storm• Leakage of internal mails onto public domain.• Publishing anonymously on internet.• Open discussion by several others in public domain.• Discussion on the credibility of research models.