Category Archives: Research

MSU: Diversity and Ethical Behaviours Among Scientists

Research

A group of Michigan State University researchers hopes to find out if belonging to a diverse research team scientists more prone to share their data and give appropriate credit to colleagues in their publications, using a five-year, $600,000 National Science Foundation grant to study how demographic and disciplinary diversity affects scientists’ ethical behaviors.

“If, as we anticipate, scientists’ ethical standards and practices are improved by promoting more diverse research teams, that’s an important argument for increasing diversity in science,” said Kevin Elliott, an  associate professor in Lyman Briggs College, the Department of Fisheries, and Wildlife and the Department of Philosophy. “And, increasing diversity can create a scientific community that’s more sensitive to all sectors of society.”

John J. Reilly Center: NSF-EESE Grant

Research

Citizen-Scientists as Agents of Change: Training the Trainer in the Ethics of Science and Technology

The Reilly Center has received an Ethics Education in Science and Engineering (EESE) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF award 1338652). This grant will allow them to provide training to 15 graduate students per year for three years beginning spring 2015.

A select group of fifteen students per year will have the opportunity for advanced training in the ethics of science and technology with a focus on “big picture” or “macro-ethics” issues. Their training starts with an intensive, one-week citizen-scientist ethics boot camp, and is reinforced for the remainder of the academic year with mandatory, follow-on, in-service projects.

NSF Network for Sustainable Climate Risk Management (SCRiM)

Research

The NSF Network for Sustainable Climate Risk Management (SCRiM) is an example of embedded philosophy.  SCRiM links a transdisciplinary team of scholars at 19 universities and 5 research institutions across 6 nations to answer the question, “What are sustainable, scientifically sound, technologically feasible, economically efficient, and ethically defensible climate risk management strategies?” A number of SRPioSE members are embedded with climate scientists, economists, statisticians, and modelers to collaborate on coupled ethical-epistemic analyses.

Michigan State University: Researchers Receive Grant for Ethics Education Project

News, Research

A team of multidisciplinary MSU researchers has received a 3-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for $196,759. The team, which consists of Dr. Michael O’Rourke, Dr. Thomas Dietz, Dr. Kyle Whyte, and Lyman Briggs Professor, Dr. Sean Valles, will lead the project, “Collaborative Research: Values and Policy in Interdisciplinary Environmental Science: A Dialogue-based Framework for Ethics Education.” This project addresses the lack of ethics education materials in interdisciplinary environmental science programs (IESPs).