The Turing Way - Guide for Ethical Research

[Ismael-KG]

Project Leads: @Ismael-KG, @LauraCarter, @BrainonSilicon

Mentor: Jez Cope (@jezcope)

Welcome to OLS-2! This issue will be used to track your project and progress during the program. Please use this checklist over the next few weeks as you start Open Life Science program 🎉.

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Week 1 (31 August - 4 September 2020): Meet your mentor!

• Create an account on GitHub
• Check if you have access to the HackMD notes set up for your meetings with your mentor
• Prepare to meet your mentor(s) by completing a short homework provided in the HackMD notes
• Complete your own copy of the open leadership self-assessment and share it to your mentor
  If you're a group, each teammate should complete this assessment individually. This is here to help you set your own personal goals during the program. No need to share your results, but be ready to share your thoughts with your mentor.
• Make sure you know when and how you'll be meeting with your mentor.

Before Week 2 (7 - 11 September 2020): Cohort Call (Welcome to Open Life Science!)

• Create an issue on the OLS-2 GitHub repository for your OLS work and share the link to your mentor.

• Draft a brief vision statement using your goals

  This lesson from the Open Leadership Training Series (OLTS) might be helpful

• Leave a comment on this issue with your draft vision statement & be ready to share this on the call

• Check the Syllabus for notes and connection info for all the cohort calls.

Before Week 3 (14 - 18 September 2020): Meet your mentor!

• Look up two other projects and comment on their issues with feedback on their vision statement
• Complete this compare and contrast assignment about current and desired community interactions and value exchanges
• Complete your Open Canvas (instructions, canvas)
• Share a link to your Open Canvas in your GitHub issue
• Start your Roadmap
• Comment on your issue with your draft Roadmap
• Suggest a cohort name at the bottom of the shared notes and vote on your favorite with a +1

Before Week 4 (21 - 25 September 2020): Cohort Call (Tooling and roadmapping for Open projects)

• Look up two other projects and comment on their issues with feedback on their open canvas.

Week 5 and later

• Create a GitHub repository for your project
• Add the link to your repository in your issue
• Use your canvas to start writing a README.md file, or landing page, for your project
• Link to your README in a comment on this issue
• Add an open license to your repository as a file called LICENSE.md
• Add a Code of Conduct to your repository as a file called CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
• Invite new contributors to into your work!

This issue is here to help you keep track of work as you start Open Life Science program. Please refer to the OLS-2 Syllabus for more detailed weekly notes and assignments past week 4.

[Ismael-KG]

Vision statement: We are creating a framework that supports an ethical research mindset and its practical application within a researcher-driven data science community, such that the community feels volitionally empowered to feed forward into the further development of ethical science practices and can then lead in building up the framework in a virtuous cycle.

[LauraCarter]

Open Canvas: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16HY8ihhWcG-Z8P-7gjxvJxov0Vz4sX4_oAhIIPCAuuc/edit#slide=id.p

[mloning]

Hi, here are some thoughts on your vision statement:

• It's a loooong sentence (I had to read it a few times to fully understand it) 😉
• What do you mean by "framework" in this case? Do you want to develop a set of principles or guidelines that can help people determine if a decision is right or wrong?
• What is an ethical research mindset? Do you want to train people to develop such a mindset?
• What is a "researcher-driven" data science community?
• What do you mean by "volitionally empowered"? How is that different from motivated?
• I like the idea of the virtuous cycle here: if we think more ethically, we can build up our ethical framework and if we build up our ethical framework, we will think more ethically.

[LauraCarter]

Thanks so much for your feedback @mloning! It's really helpful for us to develop our materials more. Some thoughts in response - not sure if we will end up incorporating these into the vision statement, or elsewhere...

• we were trying to keep it to one sentence, but perhaps it just makes it more obtuse...
• we want to move away from the idea of ethical principles - because there are so many out there, and they tend to be quite high-level and thus hard to operationalise - and from the existing tools that work a bit like checklists, because although those are useful, they reinforce the idea of ethics being somewhat separate from research/science, rather than an integral part of the work. Hence the use of 'framework' - which could include specific tools but also other things like trainings, culture change, systems of review and checks and balances, mentoring, other things we haven't thought of yet...
• we don't know exactly what it looks like yet - that's one of the things we want to develop through building this community! and training might be part of it, whether that's delivered by us or by others we're not sure yet
• 'researcher-driven' as opposed to 'for-profit'/'corporate' - of course we will not exclude data scientists in industry, but The Turing Way is overall a guide for reproducible data science research, so that's our audience
• we want our community members to feel like they have the power to change things for the better, not just the motivation (although the motivation is very important)
• we like it too! probably at some point there will be a cycle diagram :)

[kevinxufs]

Hi, this looks really exciting as a project.

In terms of the establishing of the framework, I'm interested in understanding how you might conduct the research for this.

Is it by reading the philosophical / ethical literature in this area? Or might it be by doing qualititative (or potentially quantitative) analysis on aspects of the broader data science / research industry?

What sort of methods of community engagement are you exploring such that you can bring for example data scientists on board and be interested in these ethical issues?

[CooperSmout]

Hi team, sounds like an interesting project :) I'm with @mloning in thinking that the vision statement could be more succinct. Some ideas:

and its practical application within a researcher-driven data science community,

--> "and its application by the research community" ?

such that the community feels volitionally empowered to feed forward into the further development of ethical science practices and can then lead in building up the framework in a virtuous cycle

--> "such that the community feels motivated to further develop and implement the framework in a virtuous cycle" ?

Open Canvas: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16HY8ihhWcG-Z8P-7gjxvJxov0Vz4sX4_oAhIIPCAuuc/edit#slide=id.p

This link is set to private access, so I couldn't take a look. Might want to change your sharing settings so others can take a look :)

[LauraCarter]

Thanks @CooperSmout - I've now fixed the link!

[LauraCarter]

Here is our draft Roadmap (WIP!): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PCZsKEU0IvnpCiJAdYc6K-Vry7kKNwFYCuZjOh5Sto4/edit#

[LauraCarter]

It turns out that putting a README within a book of TTW messes with the way that the book is displayed on the website, so I've closed the PR for this one and we're going to make edits directly in the contributor guide for TTW.

And here is where our README lives currently (it's on a branch of the main repo at the moment, because it will need to be approved by someone from the main Turing Way project): https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/the-turing-way/blob/LauraCarter-patch-2/book/website/ethical-research/README.md

[LauraCarter]

We haven't created a repository for our project because it already has one: https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/the-turing-way/tree/master/book/website/ethical-research

[LauraCarter]

See comment above

README now has links to the broader Turing Way Code of Conduct and License.

[malvikasharan]

@all-contributors please add @Ismael-KG for idea and content.

[allcontributors]

@malvikasharan

I've put up a pull request to add @Ismael-KG! 🎉

[malvikasharan]

@all-contributors please add @LauraCarter for idea and content.

[allcontributors]

@malvikasharan

I've put up a pull request to add @LauraCarter! 🎉

[malvikasharan]

@all-contributors please add @BrainonSilicon for idea and content.

[allcontributors]

@malvikasharan

I've put up a pull request to add @BrainonSilicon! 🎉