CS:5980:001 Topics in Computer Science III: Computing Research Ethics
Spring 2019

Instructors:
Sriram V. Pemmaraju
101G MLH, sriram-pemmaraju@uiowa.edu, 319-353-2956
Office Hours: 1:30-2:00 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/spring19/
Department website: http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/
Course Syllabus: Syllabus

Weekly Readings and Assignments

Main Reading:

• The Tuskegee Study, 1932-1972, https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/index.html
• The Belmont Report 1979: Basic Ethical Principles and their Application, https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/index.html
• University of Iowa IRBs, https://hso.research.uiowa.edu/institutional-review-boards-irbs
• "Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks," Kramer, Guillory, and Hancock. PNAS June 2014. http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full.pdf
  

Additional Reading:

• Facebook’s Emotional Manipulation Study Is Just the Latest Effort to Prod Users MIT Technology Review, July 2014.
• Retraction Watch: Rapid mood swing: PNAS issues Expression of Concern for controversial Facebook study.
• Dept of Health and Human Services: Federal Common Rule.
• Recent updates to the Federal Common Rule.

Assignment: Email your Online Training certificates for the three courses mentioned in the syllabus.

Week 3: 1/28-2/1 The Ethics of Authorship, Peer Reviewing, and Collaborative Research: Part I

Main Reading:

• "The Ethics of 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.
• 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 4: 2/4-2/8 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.
  
• Nature's peer-review debate: http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/index.html There is a whole lot to read here so here are three suggestions: (i) "How can we get the best out of peer review? A recipe for good peer review" by Trish Groves, (ii) "What is it for? Analysing the purpose of peer review" by Elizabeth Wager, and (iii) "Increasing accountability: What authors, editors and reviewers should do to improve peer review" by Kirby Lee and Lisa Bero.
  
• Single versus Double Blind Reviewing at WSDM 2017, by Andrew Tomkins, Min Zhang, and William D. Heavlin.

Week 4: 2/11-2/15 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, https://www.csee.umbc.edu/~mariedj/papers/advice.pdf.
• "The 5 Virtues of Successful Graduate Students," Thomas H. Benton, https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-5-Virtues-of-Successful/5060.
• U Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) Rights and Responsibilities of students: https://clas.uiowa.edu/students/handbook/student-rights-responsibilities and U Iowa Office of the Dean of Students "Bill of Rights" for students: https://dos.uiowa.edu/policies/student-bill-of-rights/.

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."
• The University of Iowa Mentoring Resources for Faculty and Staff: https://uiowa.edu/icru/article/mentoring-resources-facultystaff.
• "Reflections on Advising Graduate Students," David H. Monk https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2015/03/20/steps-help-professors-better-advise-graduate-students-essay
• Blog post on "Toxic Academic Mentors" from the blog "Tenure, She Wrote": https://tenureshewrote.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/toxic-academic-mentors/.

Week 5: 2/18-2/22 Algorithmic Bias and Algorithmic Fairness: Part I
Main Reading:

• A Gentle Introduction to the Discussion on Algorithmic Fairness, Gal Yona, Towards Data Science, Oct 2017.
• Big Data is Unfair: Understanding Sources of Unfairness in Data Driven Decisions, Moritz Hardt, Google.
• When Algorithms Discriminate, NYT Claire Cain Miller, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/upshot/when-algorithms-discriminate.html.

Additional Reading: Lots of additional reading at the FAT* 2019 conference program: https://fatconference.org/2019/program.html,

Week 6: 2/25-3/1 Algorithmic Bias and Algorithmic Fairness: Part II
Main Reading:

• Runaway Feedback Loops in Predictive Policing, Danielle Ensign (University of Utah), Sorelle A. Friedler (Haverford College), Scott Neville (University of Utah), Carlos Scheidegger (University of Arizona), Suresh Venkatasubramanian (University of Utah), Proceedings of Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 81:1–12, 2018.

Week 7: 3/4-3/8 Ethics of Software Engineering
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: 3/11-3/15 Issues in Data Management: Anonymity and Privacy
Main Reading:

• Only You, Your Doctor, and Many Others May Know. Sweeney L. Technology Science. Sep 29, 2015.
• On the anonymity of the Facebook dataset. from Michael Zimmer's blog (Sep 30, 2008).
• Towards matching user mobility traces in large-scale datasets, Daniel Kondor, Behrooz Hashemian, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, and Carlo Ratti. IEEE Transations on Big Data, Sep 2018.

Week 9: 3/25-3/29 Autonomy, Agency, and Liability
Main Readings:

• Moral Crumple Zones: Cautionary Tales in Human-Robot Interaction M.C. Elish, We Robot 2016 Working Paper.
• When your self-driving car crashes, you could still be the one who gets sued M.C.Elish and Tim Hwang, Quartz, July 2015.
• Machine Learning and the Law: Five Theses T. Burri, ML and the Law, NeurIPS Symposium, 2016.

Week 10: 4/1-4/5 Prof. Omar Chowdhury on the "Ethics of Computer Security and Privacy Research"
Main Readings:

• Ethics in Security Research: Which Lines Should Not Be Crossed? Sebastian Schrittwieser, Martin Mulazzani, and Edgar Weippl. Slides that go with this paper.
• Ethics in Security Vulnerability Research, Andrea M. Matwyshyn, Ang Cui, Angelos D. Keromytis, and Salvatore J. Stolfo. IEEE Security and Privacy, April 2010.
• Face-Off: Is vulnerability research ethical?, Bruce Schneier and Marcus Ranum debate the ethics of vulnerability research.

Week 11: 4/8-4/12 Prof. Rishab Nithyanand on the "Ethis of Online Advertising vs Privacy"
Main Readings:

• Mark Zuckerberg discovers privacy, Taylor Hatmaker, Tech Crunch, March 2019.
• Privacy vs Profits, Robert Wright, Oct 2010.
• Beliefs and Behaviors: Internet Users' Understanding of Behavioral Advertising, Aleecia McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor, Social Science Research Network, Aug 2010.

Week 12: 4/15-4/19 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).