June 30, 2013
Today am I going to outline the wide range of philosophic questions that I have come across in the first month of my internship. I have categorized them into communication, epistemology and ethics. Keep in mind that this is just a random list of some of the questions that buzz around in my head when I am in and out of the lab. I will add to this and re-structure it so that the taxonomy becomes clearer.
Communication:
- Which institutions have a network set up between them?
- How is this network designed, and what is the main focus of the network?
- How do scientists with different backgrounds (i.e physics and biology) work together?
- How do scientists interact with society? How can this be improved?
- How can scientists present their results to society?
- Do scientists consider the hermeneutics of their project?
Epistemology:
- What kinds of research receive money?
- Who funds scientific projects, and for what end?
- How does the project differ from the proposal?
- What kinds of systems are in place for projects that end up on a different track than the proposed research?
- Is any type of research/knowledge limited?
- When is knowledge worthy of being published?
- What makes up a ‘fact’?
- How do you decide when you repeat an experiment?
- When do you have ‘enough’ data? What does ‘enough’ mean?
Ethics:
- What do you do when the data that your experiment is based on is from ‘un-ethically’ acquired data?
- How do you approach this notorious issue of cheating and plagiarism in journals?
- How do you define ‘cheating’ or stealing knowledge?
- What are the ethical limitations of an experiment? –And when is it ok to ignore these?
- At what level of the research process should one start to consider all the possible ethical issues of the experiment?
-axio