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Ethics in Project Proposal & Scheduling

Ethics in Project Proposal & Scheduling. A Research Project Proposal is: A request to an agency for money A contractual agreement (if funded) You are promising to do something specific if they give you the money. What is the nature of a proposal?. Usually 3 to 5 years in duration

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Ethics in Project Proposal & Scheduling

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  1. Ethics in Project Proposal & Scheduling A Research Project Proposal is: A request to an agency for money A contractual agreement (if funded) You are promising to do something specific if they give you the money

  2. What is the nature of a proposal? • Usually 3 to 5 years in duration • Usually involves hundreds of thousands of dollars from the funding agency • Extremely competitive: about 1 in 10 actually get funded • It’s research. That means you don’t know for a fact what the outcome will be.

  3. What are the ethical issues? • Proposals that don’t promise much don’t get funded • Proposals that promise to do everything don’t get funded • How much can/should you promise? • How confident are YOU that you really can do what you’re promising to do?

  4. Example: AMFeR Project • Utterly new type of material technology • No one has every succeeded in doing this yet • Are there any ethical problems in this proposal?

  5. Scheduling • Major proposals usually have to commit to either a schedule or at least an estimate of when major milestones are reached • By definition, if it’s research nobody’s ever done it before • How do you schedule innovation? • Do YOU believe your own schedule? • How much should you promise here?

  6. Example: AMFeR schedule • The schedule lists major milestones • Almost all of them represent things no one has ever successfully done before • All schedules for research contain great uncertainty. • If you’re too conservative, you won’t get funded • When is optimism unethical?

  7. Closer to Home: • On your first day here you found out what your research project was to be. • How did you feel when confronted with what you were being expected to do in just 8 weeks? • Were you sure you could do it?

  8. You decided to stay & to take the money • How ethical do you think your decision was? • What would you have decided to do if you had been totally certain you couldn’t do the job? • How much uncertainty does there have to be before a decision to take the money would not be ethical? • What might have been your options?

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