- Course Description
- Reading Material
- Lecture 1: How does one write a scientific article?
- Lecture 2: How does one present a scientific article?
- Lecture 3: How does one evaluate a scientific article?
- Lecture 4: Who Should be an Author?
- Lecture 5: "How does one write a scientific article?" Reprise; Hands-on Example
- Lecture 6: The Allocation of Credit
- Lecture 7: A Conflict of Interest
- Misconduct in Science
- Lectures n and n+1: Evaluation of draft articles. (Possibly maybe)
We shall devote each of the first three lectures in the course to analyze one of these questions. The last two sessions may take place later in the semester, and will be devoted to cross reviews of your own articles (based, of course, on the criteria for evaluation that will be mentioned in the course). There may be some seminar style meetings in between where we may focus on heatedly discussing some ethical and social issues which are part and parcel of scientific life. Quoting Carl Djerassi:
"Scientists operate within a very tribal culture whose rules, mores and idiosyncrasies are generally not taught through specific lectures or books, but rather are acquired through a form of intellectual osmosis in a mentor-disciple relationship. The soul and baggage of contemporary science is made up of items such as publications, priorities, the order of the authors, the choice of the journal, the collegiality and the brutal competition, the striving for academic tenure, grantsmanship, the glass ceiling for women in a male-dominated enterprise, Schadenfreude, even Nobel lust--each with its own ethical nuances."
I trust that it will be an entertaining and enlightening experience to discuss some of these issues together.
Exercise Classes: The exercises mentioned on the web page for a lecture should be solved whenever you feel that they will be useful in supporting the writing of your article.
The booklet On Being A Scientist: Responsible Conduct In Research also has much food for thought, and we may use it as a background for some entertaining (at least I hope so!) in class discussions.
This web page has plenty of useful advice on research and writing, and is aimed primarily at computer scientists!
Reading Material:
Date: Friday, 13 February 2004 (10:15 in room KS 3 4.128)
Reading Material:
Definition (Elevator Statement). An elevator statement is an easily understandable and deep clarification of your work (project, article etc.) that is so short that you can tell it to a person while an elevator goes from one floor to the next.
If you want any comment on your work, send your elevator statements to luca@cs.auc.dk.
Date: Friday, 20 February 2004 (10:15 in room KS 3 4.128)
Reading Material:
SIGACT News, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 92-109, 1989,and was reprinted in
Bulletin of the EATCS, No. 40, pp. 511-530, 1990.The final version appeared in
Information and Computation, Vol. 112, No. 1, pp. 96-116, 1994.
Our starting point will be the case described here. (See also the slides used in the lecture.) You should read the case before coming to the seminar, form an opinion about it, and be prepared to discuss it and defend it in plenum.
You may also wish to read the section an authorship practices in the booklet On Being A Scientist: Responsible Conduct In Research.
The issue of authorship, and the role it plays in the life of scientists, is also one of the main topics of the novel The Bourbaki Gambit by Carl Djerassi. You can buy this book from Amazon.co.uk. (Look here for information on the Danish edition of this book.) Enjoy it!
Date: Friday, 27 February 2004 (10:15 in room KS 3 4.112 (Note the non-standard room!))
Look here if you want to read about the G.H. Hardy-J.E. Littlewood's axioms for successful collaboration.
Date: Friday, 5 March 2004 (10:15 in KS 3 4.128)
The purpose of this meeting is discuss the role played by
reputation, and the building or destruction of one, in
scientific life. Our starting point will be the case described here. (See
also the slides used in the lecture.) You
should read the case before coming to the seminar, form an opinion
about it, and be prepared to discuss it and defend it in plenum.
Date: Friday, 12 March 2004 (10:15 in KS 3 4.128)
Links of Possible Interest:
Lecture 6: The Allocation of Credit
In your career as students, you have actively witnessed the building
of reputations --- be they good or bad, well founded or totally
groundless. Indeed, the emergence of opinions and gossips about its
members are part and parcel of any society, and the student and
scientific communities are no exceptions. After all, as C. P. Snow
once wrote, "Scientists are human beings!"
Lecture 7: A Conflict of Interest
Quoting from On
Being A Scientist: Responsible Conduct in Research:
"Sometimes values conflict. For example, a particular circumstance might compromise-or appear to compromise-professional judgments. Maybe a researcher has a financial interest in a particular company, which might create a bias in scientific decisions affecting the future of that company (as might be the case if a researcher with stock in a company were paid to determine the usefulness of a new device produced by the company). Or a scientist might receive a manuscript or proposal to review that discusses work similar to but a step ahead of that being done by the reviewer. These are difficult situations that require trade-offs and hard choices, and the scientific community is still debating what is and is not proper when many of these situations arise."
The purpose of this meeting is to debate the conflict of interests issue in (computer) science. Our starting point will be the case described here. (See also the slides used in the lecture.) You should read the case before coming to the seminar, form an opinion about it, and be prepared to discuss it and defend it in plenum.
Date: Friday, 19 March 2004 (10:15 in KS 3 4.128)
"Beyond honest errors and errors caused through negligence are a third category of errors: those that involve deception. Making up data or results (fabrication), changing or misreporting data or results (falsification), and using the ideas or words of another person without giving appropriate credit (plagiarism)- all strike at the heart of the values on which science is based. These acts of scientific misconduct not only undermine progress but the entire set of values on which the scientific enterprise rests. Anyone who engages in any of these practices is putting his or her scientific career at risk. Even infractions that may seem minor at the time can end up being severely punished."
We shall discuss some of these issues using the cases available here as a starting point. To see that cases of scientific misconduct do exist, and to hear the strong and thoughtful opinions of a Nobel prize winner for physics on those, I strongly recommend that you read the essay Truth, Ownership, and Scientific Tradition by Robert B. Laughlin that appeared in Physics Today, 55, No. 12 (December 2002), p. 10.
The process of refereeing will occupy the first half of the day (8:30 till 11:30). You will read each other's article for at most two hours, and use the remaining hour to write a referee report of at most two pages based on your comments. Below, you'll find a list of pairs of mini-groups. Mini-groups in one pair will read and report on each other's paper.
Date: Maybe never.
Firm deadline for paper submission to the refereeing group: Better late than never.
This page will be actively modified over the spring term 2004, and is currently undergoing heavy restructuring. You are invited to check it regularly during the spring term. The page is dormant in the autumn term.