Research Methods in Engineering

Set #7 Creativity,
Intellectual Property &
Ethical Conduct
ENGR 695
 Research Methods in Engineering

Creativity, Intellectual Property &

Ethical Conduct

Slides adapted from originals by: Prof. Saleh Al-Araji

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 What is Creativity? Different Kinds of Technical Creativity:
What is an invention?

•Invention : Something that is new and • Creativity: is the ability to think and act in ways that are new
useful and results in a distinct device, *
and novel.
process or system that can be used in
practice.  New scientific theories and knowledge

 A device is not an invention if it is  The frontier: New knowledge being separated, explored,
obvious to one "skilled in the art" expanded, and made usable to society.

 A combination of old elements is not

 Development of new devices, systems and structures
an invention if no new result is
forthcoming; such a combination is
called an aggregation
 A mere substitution of obvious
equivalents, or a substitution of
materials, is not an invention unless
some surprising result is thereby
obtained
What is Innovation?
3 *http://www.mhainstitute.ca/mhadnn/AboutMHA.aspx
 Creative Person

•Everybody is creative to certain degree

•Very likely closely related to intelligence
•Educational system may tend to inhibit the development of
creativity in individuals
•“wild” and “silly” answers may be indications of creative
potential
•Peers may negatively affect “different” individuals
•“all engineers are resident inventors”

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 Perspiration and Inspiration

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent

perspiration.
Thomas Edison

Blocks to Creativity
1. Getting stuck on an old familiar solution
2. Getting stuck on the familiar use of an object
3. Premature criticism
4. Fear of social disapproval
5. Fear of failure: a person is so afraid of failure  unwilling to
depart from tradition  No creativity

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A formula for creativity Recommendations for creativity encouragement

1. Preparation
1. Relaxed organizational systems
2. Concentration
2. Supervisors to stimulate invention
3. Incubation
(subconscious mind
continues to work) 3. Personal incentives

4. Inspiration 4. Frequent exchange of new information

5. Verification (steady
nerves and enormous
determination)

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Engineering Education and Teamwork & Team Building
the Creative Experience

1. Desire and fulfillment • More productive than individual

(motivation)
2. Autonomy and support • Has to be properly managed
(environment)
3. Openness and knowledge • Given enough freedom
(tools)
4. Engrossment (immersion) and • Resembles what happens in real-world engineering
connection to the process
practice

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 What is Intellectual What is a patent?
Property?
•Is a product of the human intellect, and it is • A patent gives the person who invents or discovers any
protected by law so that it will have
commercial value. new and useful process, or product, exclusive use of the

•There are many forms of intellectual property invention for a limited term
(IP)—mechanical inventions, processes,
• A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state
chemical formulas, soft­ware, artwork,
databases, fabric, scripts, poems, and many (national government) to an inventor or their assignee for
more.
a limited period of time in exchange for a public
•IP law is often described as "affirmative
rights" as opposed to "protection," since the disclosure of an invention.
laws do not prevent unauthorized use of IP but
do give the owner of such property the right to
file a lawsuit.
• Patents are most important category of IP.
•Copy right and trade marks are becoming
increasingly important IP.

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 What does a Patent System Proposed Changes to the US Patent System?
do?
1. Stimulate research and 1. Provide for "petty patents" (petit patents) with a life of three to

development five years for minor inventions, as is now done in some

European countries.
2. Give fair chance to small as well
2.
as large companies to file patents Provide for compulsory licensing with “reasonable” royalties

3. Provide for renewal fees that must be regularly paid to keep the
3. Encourages publication and patent alive
dissemination of information 4. Establish consistent standards of patentability that would be

4. Storehouse for all patents adhered to both by the Patent Office and by the courts

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 Trade Secrets:

• Information that has commercial value to its owner, and has been

rigorously protected by the owner, generally qualifies as a trade secret.

• Trade secrets take many different forms, and may also qualify for copy­right protection under the law. Some examples of trade secrets are:

 Chemical, cosmetic, or food formulas

 Photographic processes

 Computer software

 Computer hardware

 Manufacturing processes

 Customer lists

 Customer preference databases

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 COPYRIGHT:
• While a patent grants an inventor exclusive use of a new and
nonobvious invention for a specific length of time, a copyright
protects all types of original creative expression, generally for
the lifetime of the author plus 50 years.
• uniquely identifies them in the
Items that are included under copyright protection are literary
works, musical works, dramatic works, video games, computer
programs, semiconductor chips.
• Example: Copyright © 2000, by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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TRADEMARKS:
• Trademarks provide commercial
protection by preserving the right of a
business to the exclusive use of a
distinctive "mark" that identifies the
source of their goods and services and
marketplace.
• Trademark law is not as important to
engineering as patent and copyright law,
but with the proliferation of Internet
businesses the protection of domain
names will likely be treated by the law in
a similar manner to any other trademark.
 Invention Agreements: Confidential Disclosure:

It has become an almost a universal • There are hidden legal hazards in accepting ideas from outsiders.
practice to require technical personnel to If there is nothing to indicate otherwise, the law has often taken
sign an invention-assignment agreement
the position that such disclosures are given in confidence and
as one of the conditions of employment.
that, therefore, the ideas may not be used without permission and
Such agreements amount to the following:
payment.
1. The employee agrees to disclose to the
employer all inventions that fall in the • If a corporation does not take appropriate protective steps, it
employer’s line of business could even find itself in the irritating position of having to pay for
2. The employee agrees to perform all acts
an idea it had already developed for itself, if it accepts
necessary in applying for patents and in
suggestions from outsiders.
executing assignments
3. The employee agrees to maintain secrecy
on all knowledge gained during the course
of employment

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Defining Ethics: Engineering Ethics:

• Morality • Engineering ethics consists of the responsibilities

and rights that ought to be endorsed by those

• Actions that are engaged in engineering and also of desirable ideals

morally required and personal commitments in engineering.

• Engineering ethics is the study of the decisions,

• Actions that are policies, and values that are morally desirable in
morally permissible engineering practice and research.

• Policies and laws that

are desirable

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Codes of Ethics: Importance of Codes:

 Codes of Ethics state the 1. Serving and protecting the public.

moral responsibilities of 2. Guidance

engineers as seen by the 3. Inspiration

profession, and as 4. Shared standards

represented by a 5. Support for responsible professionals
professional society.
6. Education and mutual understanding

7. Deterrence and discipline

 Codes are very
8.
important, not only in Contributing to the profession’s image

stressing engineers’
responsibilities but also
the freedom to exercise
them.

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 Limitations of Codes

1. Codes are restricted to general
wording.
2. Different entries in codes may
seem to come into conflict
with each other.
5. Codes invariably emphasize responsibilities but say nothing
about the rights of professionals (or employee) to pursue
their endeavors responsibly.
6. Codes after all, represent a compromise between different

judgments.
3. Un unified codes between the
various professional societies.
4. ABET provides a unifying
codes for individuals who are
registered Professional
Engineers

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 IEEE CODES OF ETHICS
Approved by the IEEE Board of Directors February 2006

“We, the members of the IEEE (Engineering Community), in recognition of the importance of

our technologies in affecting the quality of life throughout the world, and in accepting a personal

obligation to our profession, its members and the communities we serve, do hereby commit

ourselves to the highest ethical and professional conduct and agree:

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 IEEE CODES OF ETHICS
1. to accept responsibility in making decisions consistent with the
safety, health and welfare of the public, and to disclose
promptly factors that might endanger the public or the
environment;
2. to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest whenever
possible, and to disclose them to affected parties when they do
exist;

3. to be honest and realistic in stating claims or estimates based

on available data;

4. to reject bribery in all its forms;

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 IEEE CODES OF ETHICS

5. to improve the understanding of technology, its appropriate

application, and potential consequences;
6. to maintain and improve our technical competence and to
undertake technological tasks for others only if qualified by
training or experience, or after full disclosure of pertinent
limitations;

7. to seek, accept, and offer honest criticism of technical

work, to acknowledge and correct errors, and to credit
properly the contributions of others;

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 IEEE CODES OF ETHICS

8. to treat fairly all persons regardless of such factors as race,

religion, gender, disability, age, or national origin;
9. to avoid injuring others, their property, reputation, or
employment by false or malicious action;

10.to assist colleagues and co-workers in their professional

development and to support them in following this code of
ethics.”

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Truthfulness: Trustworthiness :

 The standard of truthfulness is • Engineering is based on exercising expertise within a

very high. relationship of trust in order to provide safe and useful products.

 It imposes an absolute prohibition  Untruthfulness and untrustworthiness undermine expertise by

on deception.
 It establishes a high ideal of
seeking and speaking the truth.
 Because so much is at stake in
terms of human safety, health,
corrupting professional judgments and communications.
 They also undermine the trust of the public, employers, and
others who must rely on engineers’ expertise.

Sound engineering is honest, and dishonesty is bad engineering.

and well-being, engineers are

required and expected to seek and
to speak the truth and to avoid all
acts of deception.

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Academic Integrity: Research Integrity:

 Academic dishonesty includes

dishonesty among students,
 Research in engineering takes place in many settings,

faculty, and other members of including universities, government labs, and corporations.
academic institutions.
 The exact moral requirements vary somewhat, according to
 Academic dishonesty among
students takes several forms: the applicable guidelines and regulations, but the
o Cheating
truthfulness responsibility applies to all settings.
o Fabrication
o Plagiarism
o Facilitating academic dishonesty
o Misrepresentation
o Failure to contribute to a
collaborative project
o Sabotage
o Theft

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Excellence versus Bias and Self-deception:
Misconduct:
 Integrity in research is about  Self-deception is allowing one’s judgment to be biased by
promoting excellence (high what one wants to believe and by one’s emotions-especially
quality) in these activities, and
wishes, hopes, self-esteem, and fears.
this positive emphasis on
excellence should be kept
paramount in thinking about
honesty in research.
 Misconduct includes
fabrication, falsification,
plagiarism, or other serious
deviation from accepted
research practices.

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Protecting Research Giving and Claiming Credit:
Subjects:
 Research in fields like  Often there are pressures on researchers to varnish the truth
medicine and psychology
when competing for professional recognition.
extensively involve human
beings as research subjects and  Not only because it brings ego gratification but also because

also animals. it might involve winning jobs, promotions, and income.

 But research in engineering  Outright fraud of the following type also occurs:
sometimes involves
o
experimental subjects as well, Plagiarism

especially when it overlaps o Misrepresenting credentials

with biomedical research. o Misleading listing of authorship
 Experiments on human are
permissible only after
obtaining the voluntary
consent of human subjects.

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 Reporting Misconduct

 There is a growing consensus that

researchers have a responsibility to report
misconduct by other researchers when the
misconduct is serious and when they are in
a position to document it.

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 Case Study 1
GROUP MISCONDUCT REGARDING LABORATORY PROCEDURE

You are a graduate student working as part of a group on a large project. The results
from your group experiments are used for other experimental work. Your faculty
supervisor, the principal investigator (PI) for the project, wants you to use a new
procedure in your experimental work. He expects the new procedure to yield results
that are better suited to the conditions of the other experimental work. The other
members of your group do not want to change the procedure they have been using; the
new one requires significantly more work. They believe the PI will not notice if the
old procedure is used.

You rely on the group for assistance in your own thesis work, but if you go along with the
decision to use the old procedure, the quality of the data will most likely be inferior; you will
mislead the PI and perhaps the whole scientific community.

You argue for using the new procedure and informing the PI that the work will just have to take
longer-information which he is not likely to receive well. The rest of the group is not
persuaded.

What should you do and how can you go about it?

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 Case Study 2
DOUBTS ABOUT PUBLISHED RESULTS
You are a computer science graduate student and for two years have been working on an operating system design in
Professor Carr's group. Professor Carr has designed a set of novel heuristics for file-system cache maintenance. Carr
published performance graphs describing a simulation of a prototype file input/output subsystem in a journal article and
included the graphs in the proposal for the group's current grant. The graphs indicate that Carr's heuristic methods will
significantly improve file-system cache performance.

You devise a modification to the file system cache heuristics and asked Carr how to run the simulation code to test the
modification. Carr replied that the simulation code had not been used in a long time and had been archived to tape. Carr
said it was not worth the trouble trying to remember the archived filenames, because the simulation code was very poor
and written in a language that does not run in the group's current computing environment. He told you to write a new,
up-to-date simulator.

As you worked on the new simulator, you asked Carr how to simulate several classes of events, but Carr
claimed not to remember these details of the old simulator. When you finish building a new simulator,
your results are considerably worse than those reported in the performance graphs that Carr published.

You now suspect that Carr did not do a previous simulation and made up the numbers in the performance.
Some of your own presentations and papers have been based on Carr's performance data. What
can/should you do? What, if any, ambiguities do you face? What risks are there in this situation to
yourself or others?

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 Case Study 3
INSTRUCTED TO FABRICATE DATA

You are a senior majoring in computer science and have a part-time job working in the
cognitive sciences department of your university. Your job is to write and maintain a computer
program to record data on the cognitive performance of patients who are research subjects in a
study in one of the cognitive sciences labs.

During the semester the research team writes a grant proposal for continuation of the study that
you have been working on. They are behind schedule in their project. Not only have no papers
been submitted for publication, but the number of patients tested is not high enough to write any
paper. Your supervisor instructs you to "generate numbers" that are comparable to the
results they previously obtained and says the numbers you have been asked to "generate"
(that is, fabricate) will never appear in the literature and that this is just grantsmanship
and everyone does it.

What, if anything can and should you, as an undergraduate, do in this situation? Where in your
institution can you go to get unbiased and confidential advice about the options open to you?

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 Case Study Assignment
Risk Assessment and Nuclear Waste Sites
You are an engineer working for a private laboratory with expertise in nuclear waste disposal and
risk assessment. The DOE (Department of Energy) has recently awarded your laboratory with a
contract to do a risk assessment of various nuclear waste disposal sites. The study was to have
been completed in six years. You are the leader of a team of engineers working on this project.
After six years the study still is not complete. A disagreement on the reason for the delay has arisen between your
laboratory and the DOE. You are asking for more time because of the extensive calculations required; you argue
that your group must use state of the art science in doing its risk assessment. The DOE says you are using
overly high standards of risk assessment to prolong the process, extend the contract, and get more money for
your company. They want you to use simpler calculations and finish the project; if you are unwilling to do so,
they plan to find another company that thinks differently. Your supervisor expresses to you the concern that
while good science is important in an academic setting, this is the real world and the contract with the DOE is in
jeopardy.
Questions:
1.What should you do? In particular, how do you respond to the concerns of the DOE and your own company’s management?
2.What are your responsibilities in this situation? To the DOE? To the public, especially the citizens living near the possible waste disposal
sites? To your company? If these responsibilities conflict with one another, are there ways to harmonize them?
3.What kind of standards should you employ in risk assessment? If employing more strict standards requires more time and delays, what
are the ethical issues raised by these delays? If you adopt simpler standards, what kind of ethical issues does this raise?

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