CS:5980:001 Topics in Computer Science III: Computing Research Ethics
Spring 2017

Instructors:
Sriram V. Pemmaraju
101G MLH, sriram-pemmaraju@uiowa.edu, 319-353-2956
Office Hours: 1:00-2:00 M, 10:30-11:30 W, 2:00-3:00 F (and by appointment)
Alberto M. Segre
14D MLH, alberto-segre@uiowa.edu, 319-335-1713
Office Hours: by appointment

Course website: http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~sriram/5980/spring17/
Department website: http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/
Course Syllabus: Syllabus

Weekly Readings and Assignments

Additional Reading:

• Facebook’s Emotional Manipulation Study Is Just the Latest Effort to Prod Users MIT Technology Review, July 2014.
• Retraction Watch.

Assignment: Complete online RCR training by class time on Monday, Jan 30th.

Week 2: 1/30-2/3 The Ethics of Authorship, Peer Reviewing, and Collaborative Research: Part I
Main Reading: ``The Ethics of Authorship: Feature Overview--How Should Authorship Be Decided?'' Katie Cottingham, March 2001. http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2001/03/ethics-authorship-feature-overview-how-should-authorship-be-decided. Make sure you read the essays by the 4 "authorship experts" in response to the hypothetical authorship dilemma prsented in the article.

Additional Reading:

• University of Iowa Authorship Policy http://opsmanual.uiowa.edu/community-policies/research/university-iowa-authorship-policy.
  
• The double helix and the 'wronged heroine' http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6921/full/nature01399.html.
  

Week 3: 2/6-2/10 The Ethics of Authorship, Peer Reviewing, and Collaborative Research: Part II
Main Reading:

• "Ethics of Peer Review: A Guide for Manuscript Reviewers," Sara Rockwell, http://ori.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/prethics.pdf.
  
• "Ethics of Peer Review: A Guide for Manuscript Reviewers. Case studies -- Guide for the Discussion Leader," Sara Rockwell, http://ori.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/guide.pdf.

Additional Reading:

• Nature's peer-review debate: http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/index.html There is a whole lot to read here -- pick and choose.
• "Reviews of Journal Manuscripts: Nasty, Petty, Arrogant," Chronicle of Higher Education, 2000. http://chronicle.com/article/Reviews-of-Journal/13740.

Week 4: 2/13-2/17 Rights and Responsibilities of Graduate Students as Advisees and Faculty as Advisors including Conflicts of Interest/Commitment
Main Reading:

• "How to be a Good Graduate Student," Marie desJardins, http://www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.html.
  
• Blog post on "Toxic Academic Mentors" from the blog "Tenure, She Wrote": https://tenureshewrote.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/toxic-academic-mentors/.
• The Ideal PhD Mentor--A Student's Perspective, Science 2002, W.T.Ling, http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2002/12/ideal-phd-mentor-students-perspective

Additional Reading:

• The Ph.D Experience, Mihir Bellare CS Prof at UCSD https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~mihir/phd.html.
• Matt Might, CS Prof at Utah has lots of excellent advice for graduate students. Look under "Graduate School" in this index of article: http://matt.might.net/articles/. Some example articles that seem most relevant are: "12 resolutions for grad students," "The 5+5 Commandments of a Ph.D," "10 easy ways to fail a Ph.D."

Week 5: 2/20-2/24 Algorithmic Bias and Algorithmic Fairness: Part I
Main Reading:

• Big Data is Unfair: Understanding Sources of Unfairness in Data Driven Decisions, Moritz Hardt, Google.
• Algorithms and Bias: Q. and A. With Cynthia Dwork, NYT Claire Cain Miller, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/upshot/algorithms-and-bias-q-and-a-with-cynthia-dwork.html.
• When Algorithms Discriminate, NYT Claire Cain Miller, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/upshot/when-algorithms-discriminate.html.

Week 6: 2/27-3/3 Algorithmic Bias and Algorithmic Fairness: Part II
Main Reading:

• Unequal Representation and Gender Stereotypes in Image Search Results for Occupations, Matthew Kay, Cynthia Matuszek, and Sean A. Munson, CHI 2015 (best paper).
• Automated Experiments on Ad Privacy Settings: A Tale of Opacity, Choice, and Discrimination, Amit Datta, Michael Carl Tschantz, and Anupam Datta, Proceedings of Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium, 2015.

Week 7: 3/6-3/10 Ethics of Creating and Deploying Software
Main Reading:

• http://www.infoworld.com/article/2607452/application-development/12-ethical-dilemmas-gnawing-at-developers-today.html "12 ethical dilemmas gnawing at developers today," Peter Wayner, InfoWorld, April 2014.
• https://www.scu.edu/media/ethics-center/technology-ethics/Students.pdf, An Introduction to Software Engineering Ethics, Shannon Vallor and Arvind Narayanan. This is a rather long paper; we will cover the first three "parts" of the paper.

• High-Pressure Steam Engines and Computer Software, Nancy G. Leveson, keynote talk at the International Conference on Software Engineering, 1992. This is a "classic" in this field.
• ACM Code of Software Engineering Ethics.

Week 8: 3/20-3/24 Research Misconduct and Issues in Data Management such as Anonymity and Privacy
Main Reading:

• Only You, Your Doctor, and Many Others May Know. Sweeney L. Technology Science. September 29, 2015.
• On the anonymity of the Facebook dataset. from Micahel Zimmer's blog (Sep 30, 2008).

Week 9: 3/27-3/31Research Misconduct and Issues in Data Management such as Anonymity and Privacy: Differential Privacy
Main Reading:

• Apple’s "Differential Privacy" Is About Collecting Your Data—But Not Your Data, Andy Greenberg, WIRED, June 2016.
• Differential Privacy: The Basics, Anthony Tockar, Northwestern University, Sept 2014.
• Chapters 1 and 2 from The Algorithmic Foundations of Differential Privacy, Cynthia Dwork and Aaron Roth, 2014.

Week 10: 4/3-4/7 The ethics of using animals in research
Main Reading:

• Some Thoughts on Animal Experimentation, David S. Favre, 2 Animal L. 161 (1996).
• Of Mice and Ethics, C.T. Streba, C.C. Vere, Cristina Miscu, D.I. Gheonea, Larisa Sandulescu, T. Ciurea, I. Rogoveanu, A. Saftoiu, Current Health Sciences Journal, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2012 January March.
• Animal ethics in Cardiovascular Research, Marisol Ruiz-Meana, Elizabeth A. Martinson, David Garcia-Dorado, and Hans Michael Piper. Cardiovascular Research (2012) 93, 1–3
• Open Science and Reporting Animal Studies: Who’s Accountable?, Jonathan A. Eisen, Emma Ganley, Catriona J. MacCallum, PLOS Biology, Jan 2014 12(1).

Week 12: 4/17-4/21 Data Control, Encryption, and Privacy
Main Reading:

• Control use of data to protect privacy Susan Landau, Science Jan 2015: Vol. 347, Issue 6221, pp. 504-506.