Week 1

In this week log book, the content will include the clearification with Dr Lee and risk assessments done during the vacation, and week one learning materials. 

• Clearification and conversation with Dr Lee

Our Capstone topic is: Development of a learning guide for the Digital Twin of the Integrated Pilot Plant. We did not have enough time to discuss with one another as the given time for choosing topic was really short. Therefore, we were given this topic as our Capstone Project. 

After the first discussion with Dr Lee in school, we notice that the main purpose of our project is to simplify and introduce the digital twin system to wider range of audience. In another words, we are tasked to translate the manual and make it easier to be understood. It is also been recommanded to create a survey and collect feedback to improve our draft. After improving, we will have to submit a hard copy draft to TE for review. After we had read through the mamual, we found it challenging and encounter some difficulties. The difficulties such as how are we going to reinterpret existing manual as there are many terminology that we have not learnt yet or even seen before. It will be a long and challenging learning journey for us.

When we met Dr Lee for the second time online, he told us about the marking scheme. We are not actually surprised about it as we all know this is our last semaster and we will all try our best. Althrough our Capstone topic is different from other classmates and seems challenging,  we believe we can do well if enough effort is contributed. 

• Risk assessment

The risk assessment was done smoothly as we are really famaliar with the format and Dr Lee had given some guides to us. There might not be a lot of content to write in the risk assessment as we are only operating the digital twin system. Apart from electrical and fire hazards, the risk can also be exist in ergonomic way such as slip, fall and trip to fall. Dr Lee had told us about some real stories that he had encountered years ago, we were also shocked when there is really someone who can injuried himself when he was sleeping.

• Week 1 learning material

Ethics in research

1. Compare and contrast the John Darsee case and the student who fabricated data. Are there comparisons to be made or are the two situations completely unrelated?

I think that both John Darsee case and the student who fabricated data are related. The following investigations seem to point the doubt to John Darsee’s questionable research practices dating during his undergraduate days. Although it seems only Harvard was heavily impacted by it. His mistake can affected many other people indirectly due to the fraudulent data in his research papers. One of the example would be the heart drugs that were created from the research papers that Darsee published, it could have serious side effects that could potentially harm the consumers and even lead to death. Another example would be that Braunwald and his colleagues had to spend several months investigating Darsee’s research rather than continuing their own research.

This is similar to the student who fabricated data, where his action would indirectly affect others. If it is discovered that the student’s data is fabricated, other group members would have to spend additional time redoing the experiment and subsequent mistakes caused by using the fabricated data. This adds additional stress on the other teammates which could affect their quality of their work, resulting in overall scores affected.

In conclusion, in both cases, the questionable integrity of the data will not only affect the person, but others as well both directly or indirectly.

2. What kinds of reasons might the student give for fabricating data? Are any of these reasons good reasons, that is, do any of the reasons justify fabrication data?

The major reasons for fabricating data would be feeling overpressured and facing time constraints. When working with a large amount of data, the students will have to do many experiments and record down many data. Students may find the workload tedious and exhausting. Other than feeling constant pressure, students may be unable to complete all the experiments within the time given. If the student cannot finish all the experiments in the given time, there may be consequences such as bringing down the results of the whole group and not producing a report that is to the best of their ability.

These are definitely not good reasons to fabricate data because every data in the experiment is important and fabricating data may affect a lot of further calculations. The experiment to obtain data has its own reason to be thorough, as so to make the further calculation more accurate. Although fabricating data may not be discovered, the hard work done by teammates and the expectation from teachers could all go to waste.

3. Who is harmed by fabricating data for a lab report for a class?

The students themselves will be harmed by fabricating data for lab reports. During the lab report in class, the main purpose of doing the experiment is to learn from the procedure. The accuracy of the data depends on how precise the procedure is. Students are supposed to learn how to follow the procedure correctly and precisely so that they can get accurate data as a reference on how well they did. Even worse for the case  if the student gets used to fabricating data when doing lab reports. When a student enters a career in the future, fabricating data is prohibited as a serious offense. It will affect the student in the long run especially in data analysis careers.

4. Does the student have to be caught in order for fabrication to be ethically wrong?

5. What responsibility does a student have for checking the trustworthiness of the work of their lab partner(s)?

6. What might be done to reduce the likelihood that data fabrication occurs?

Statistics in research