Author: Ishi Keenum

Halloween occurred this week and while I'm not someone for scary movies, I really like any excuse to get excited about anything and therefore I found myself very involved in Halloween shenanigans. One big (somewhat) aspect of halloween is the idea that things are scary and these things are ghosts, vampires, and zombies. But these aren't really the things that scare me. It's been interesting to see the transition into adult hood that I feel like I've finally reached and to realize there are much more terrifying things than you could imagine as a child.

I guess the things I'm scared of are mostly to do with ethics and I guess the lack thereof in others. I'm scared that when I get a job, I discover that my coworkers are not the upstanding citizens I initially thought they were. I hope that my personal gut reactions would be enough to keep me out of this situation, but honestly interviews are meant for both parties to show off.

I'm scared that our country doesn't value science, the truth and that we are allowing the fear of others to dominate our policies. Whether this is about domestic or international policy, we can't always assume the worst in everyone. Society can't work like that. I'm worried that people who are competent to enact change won't want to because they see the circus that we force our politicians and high ranked officials to go through. I think being accountable is important but I also think sometimes we place unrealistic expectations on our officials. We deter individuals who don't want the hassle rather than based on their qualifications.

I'm worried that a large aspect of this class relies on going to the public in the case of an emergency or cover up, but I fundamentally believe people need to be able to trust government agencies, or they cease to function. I don't know where the invisible line is between the two, but there seems to be an increasing lack of accountability that is troubling.

As a kid, my worst nightmare involved being chased by a TRex, probably because my parents let me watch Jurassic Park a bit too young, now I realize that maybe ghosts and dinosaurs aren't as likely to cause major problems in my life, but the actions of fellow people certainly will.

TTFN, Ta Ta For Now

After watching Dr. Pruden's TEDx Talk from the Spring. She talks about her journey in becoming the person she is today and her motivations for being a professor. I found this talk to be incredibly compelling, especially because as someone she advises, I often don't see this side of her.

I see the person she talks about in her TED talk. The constantly working, caring, tired, and trying person who is doing the best that she can and that is honestly pretty good. The revelation she presented about realizing why she wanted to become a professor and the reality, really hit me hard on why am I here. I don't think Dr. Pruden gives herself enough credit for also advising students and helping them through their lives, but she does highlight a crucial point. Why do I want to get a PhD?

Honestly I think a lot of it is for the same reasons that Dr. Pruden mentioned. I'm good at school and I want to try to improve access to clean water for generations. I haven't decided if that means I should be an academic or if I want to try government or international work but I don't want that ideal to get lost. The biggest problem I've noticed with life goals is that life often gets in the way.

This has happened to me and I think most people for my entire life. I want to help people and to make that central to my life, but I also need some releases and activities to keep me happy. I struggle with the idea that I should be working all the time but sometimes I just need to remember:


I really value the work I do and I think that research is a lot of what propels us forward, but I also like field work and getting my hands dirty. The one thing we all need to be able to do is step back and see if we could answer the phone. You are not going to do everything for everyone but being able to put things in context definitely helps me think of what I want to do.

This post is predominately in reaction to the Facebook/ social media posts "Me too" as a way women this week have taken to trying to show the extent to which sexual assault and harassment exists in the US. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this social media movement, a lot of which come from the idea that women shouldn't have to "out" their personal experiences to give a magnitude to a problem, but this week I want to focus on a marked trend and that is salaries and jobs and women in engineering.

This is an issue I think on a lot. I strongly believe that people should be judged on the quality of their work and find it seriously compelling when you learn about how introducing double blind auditions was the first time a woman had been hired to a major orchestra. I think its crazy that in 2017 this conversation is still ongoing and that individuals honestly think that gender is a reason to doubt someones abilities. But I digress.

In terms of ethics, this is honestly not something we've discussed or read and I have to wonder why. No where in our ethics readings have we looked at equality as ethical. We've focused on the role of integrity in engineering and of bringing in the public, but what about fellow experts who are not getting credit or the opportunities they deserve? Including and representing diversity is a hot topic right now in both collegiate and work settings and I do think there is serious discussion as to how to ethically do this.

I don't believe that women should be given preferential treatment solely because they are women in the hiring process, but we need to acknowledge that being a woman in a male field sets you at a disadvantage. Its hard to envision yourself in a role you've never seen anyone like you have. If I walk into an interview with all male interviewers and an equally qualified male counterpart does as well, he will most likely have more conversationally relevant topics to talk about. Whether thats sports or video games or just overall manliness (I know there are women who rebuke these trends I am all for it but there are genuinely some conversational differences that arise between a group of men and a group of men with one woman). I'm not sure how to fix this issue but the idea of a "diversity hire" also raises some concerns, but I don't have a better solution. Studies shows that the perceived gender and race on your resume can affect your chances of being given an interview. I know women who intentionally put I. Keenum over Ishi because they know they statistically are more likely to be taken seriously. I'm wondering if double blind hiring could be a thing and I'm trying to figure out how it will work. I realize that even this won't overcome decades of systematically altering the opportunities given to different races and genders, for instance a heavily involved member of SWE is generally thought to be female, but there has to be a way to help this out.

I realize I didn't address all the things I wanted to and that there is infinitely more to the conversation but take a second to realize that this affects academia as well as the "real world". Women published in high impact journals are less cited than male counterparts by both men and women.


I hope something changes but until then I'm glad I have a gender neutral name that no one really knows what to do with.

As my first semester of grad school plods along, I'm thinking a lot on "Why am I doing this?". I have friends making their careers and families as hair stylists, teachers, marine educators and the list goes on. What is compelling me to stay here for long nights and early mornings and do I agree with the system I'm participating in?

Let me start off with the idea that I like research, but I don't like the constant undulation of stress that comes with trying to do classes and research. That part is a struggle and it has me longing for summer days. So on the basis that I actually like some of what I do, what kinds of hours is ethical to expect of grad students?

I know this is a controversial topic that some countries think school should be everything and some professors recall the numerous all nighters they pulled in pursuit of their PhD, but is this reasonable? I mean in the US we have the 40 hour work week ( which is itself on the higher spectrum of work weeks) but grad school seemingly ignores this. If you take the 13 hours of class I'm in and then multiply by 3 with the idea you do 3 hours of work outside class for every hour you are in. And then you add 20 hrs of research a week. You're at a 59 hour work week, which is a lot. I like what I've been doing in grad school so far and I'm excited to actually get involved in research projects but I do find myself asking am I living to work or working to live?

I'm sure ideally you find a balance of both and its definitely possible. Many people get graduate degrees. I just wonder if its reasonable and what is the alternative? Right now I spend most of my waking energy researching and doing homework and while I could do more on the weekends, the long weeks make weekends a much needed respite. I'm sure I'll get used to it but I do sometimes think of the expectation that is set and if it is something I would want for others. I'm also not sure of the alternative because I believe that getting a PhD should be a lot of work. Its not clear to me, but it is something I think about when I see a lot of undergrads walking to their cars starting at around 2pm.

I'm trying to figure out what motivates people to choose a career path. Some people, I know, are in it for the most money, some just want to be able to travel and some people honestly never have a career. I don't understand though, going through the crappy hours, honestly low pay of getting a PhD, all to throw that away with fraudulent NSF grants.

I'm talking about the Virginia Tech professor who was recently accused of financial fraud for sending money to China and not paying the correct amount to Virginia Tech. Now his trial will be in 2018 and until then I am just going off of the alleged accusations because this man is not the first nor the last to throw away his career for money.

What gets me though is, he has a tenure track job. He has won the academic lottery and is getting paid to theoretically do what he wants. I don't know about you but I honestly wouldn't waste my entire career on money, that I don't even get to keep!!! I'm sure this is where the nuance of ethical violations comes in. Its a slippery slope and I have to assume that this Dartmouth educated professor didn't go through his grad program thinking - if only I can land a tenure track job, then I can steal a million dollars and send it back home.- Thats not enough motivation to get you through the years of school.

But what, I wonder, was the first pebble that fell to lead him down this slippery slope? I'm sure it was something simple, like maybe a contract they held did more than they were supposed to and wanted compensation. But when should someone or could someone have blown the whistle? This seems like a case that from the inside doesn't seem as bad as it looks from the outside. But it looks really bad.

Every grant I've been on has been painstakingly obsessed with a clear budget and maybe its because I've gotten lucky on who I work with. To me though, I'm happy to get a PhD but I'm not just doing it for the sake of it. I hope it helps me get a job I want down the line and I don't plan on throwing away (oh god) whats going to be at least 20 years of education for fraud.

Until next time,

IMK

This past week each member of our team was assigned a role to act out in the DC Lead Crisis that occurred from 2000 – 2004. I acted as Lynette Stokes, the representative for the DC Department of Health. The exercise of reading all the briefings and then defending the actions of others, was a great example to me of often what it can be like to be a leader in an organization. In this case, however, most representatives were guilty of misdoing or covering it up and quite honestly, I was appalled at how they acted.

After watching the footage of the actual press conference where Lynette Stokes lied to the public I realized that how deep of a hole you can dig yourself into. Knowing what she knew and having an office dedicated to defending public health, she could have given advice regardless of how her agency had acted. The EPA and DOH agreed in my group that we were going to tell everything we knew to the public whereas the CDC, Washington Aqueduct and WASA lied or really just shifted blame. The blame shifting and pointing fingers, really accomplished nothing.

As the DOH, I decided to give all the advice I could base on the packets I was given. I admitted that the DOH did not produce effective health warnings and that we had failed the public, but I also tried to avoid chaos. The DOH is responsible for making sure those that need access to healthcare can get it and assessing the honest risk of individuals. I tried to stick to the morals that the DOH lays out because that is what the job of Lynette Stokes was.

I do think the final question of the press conference was interesting. “Should you keep your job?” was asked of each of the panelists and not surprisingly all of us said yes. When arguably, none of us have done our job already.

I don’t understand why the samples were originally not reported and while it’s good that people felt the need to whistle blow, it shouldn’t have been necessary. The degree of jaded it takes to not realize how doing your job in protecting the drinking water quality of others can affect public health is honestly mind boggling. This exercise kind of showed to me how people will act in their own self-interest and showed that we somehow need a better way of determining who is a good leader. The idea that you can be fired for factual results and that even when you report them correctly you can be fired in completely ludicrous. I wonder if a series of HR complaints against Mr. Mercotte could have helped and I wonder how we can prevent this from happening in the future.

This exercise, and really this course overall, has really challenged my view of others. I try to always assume individuals are doing their best and to discover that some people will willingly not do their job is hard. I don’t think of myself as the most moral person in the world and honesty when reading the Young Professionals survival guide, I find myself seriously considering what I would do in these situations. For me, clear things like fraud (falsifying reimbursements) aren’t the challenge, but it’s the situations when you are pretty sure what someone is asking you to do is wrong but they are your boss. I can see myself struggling with this and that is why I have really tried to be careful with who I surround myself with.

This week we discussed Biases in our daily life and how, as scientists, we need to be constantly aware that we hold biases and try to be as honest with ourselves about what those may be. I was shocked to hear responses to the Hindsight Bias when it was presented in a research setting.

The idea that "the end justifies the means" isn't something I'm comfortable with, especially because you often don't know the "end" of an instance. Maybe its the outcome of a pharmaceutical study as discussed in class but more likely than not its less defined. I realize that for some this may seem trivial but I do research for a living. Its literally why they pay me to go to grad school and the idea that there is any acceptable level of data falsification essentially invalidates a lot of the work I do to create genuine inferences from real data. I am confident that the things you discover through genuine scientific discovery are more interesting than conclusions that say what you want them to but its a bit extremely frustrating to see that it may be true. Even if, in our class example, no one gets hurt and its an effective drug, why then do we have regulatory limits and industry. Unfortunately these came about from individuals taking advantage of each other and that is what seems to be suggested here. Obviously if people die from your mistake it is seen as more egregious but research is what leads to most of our scientific innovation and to discount it is short-sighted.

We need to be careful what we justify as bias and what is unethical. Improving the world relies on the honesty and hard work of others. We have to trust that the medicine we take was accurately vetted and the buildings we work in have steel that passed all necessary deflection tests. An interesting aspect of this course thus far has been that it has made me consider how many people do I have to trust in my daily life and how much of what I use now was formerly research or a scientific development? What I'm getting at is we have to trust each other if we want to live in society. We have to trust that its no ones self interest to cut corners or that there are mechanisms in place to catch these wrong doers. I guess I'm trying to say is it's important to step back and see why your work or research is important and why people are paying for it. Taking a step back and being able to put life in perspective can only help.

That's all I got this week.

I would love to here what y'all think about this.

IMK

The guest in class this week has me seriously thinking on local government and how we establish trust with the public. As engineers and in any other profession. We commented that you trust your doctor to look out for diseases and to talk care of you, just like you likely trust your government, or at least local government.

When I grew up I wanted to be president. As I aged I thought I wanted nothing to do with that career and switched into engineering but lately, admittedly since around summer of 2016, I realized that the people who run for public office really have no job requirements other than winning a vote. To me, that is terrifying. You always assume that your president, mayor, head of EPA or even your school board is looking out for you, but what if they aren't? Who is keeping them in check and what can you do if you think that elected officials are no longer working "for the people"?

I was talking to a friend about this very issue and he mentioned that when he visited Hong Kong, the main thing he noticed was that pharmacies are stock full of baby formula. He explained that he heard it was because, for a while, Chinese baby formula was contaminated with pesticides that caused a whole host of negative health effects in infants. Now Chinese parents who can afford it buy British sourced formula in Hong Kong and take it back to mainland China whenever they can. This lack of trust in the government is unfortunately something I am becoming more familiar with but it is not something I grew up with.

My brother volunteered with our city council this summer and was in charge of researching the public record background of candidates running for office. Its a little offputting to me that no one else is in charge of this within the government but I guess I can see why. His research uncovered multiple candidates with pasts that I would not want for my government officials. Multiple candidates had serious offenses ( not felonies which would take them out of the running) and three had serious character flaws when you began researching their public record history. This is not who I want representing me in government, but then who should? This summer our Mayor decided to bisect a city park serving low income youth for an access road for the nearby golf course. He did this with parks and recreation funds and with a mayoral executive order. On the night of the city council vote when it could be overturned, only 3 of the 5 council members showed up and at least 4 were needed for the vote to win. My brother spent the rest of the summer researching other ways to stop the park from getting destroyed and that is still ongoing but I'm realizing that the people we place in our local governmental offices have more power over our daily lives than we would like to think.

Ideally kids can go to the park without a road running through it. They shouldn't have to look both ways to get the frisbee that went to the other half of a previously large park, but that may not be the case anymore. We trust our local government to make sure the town's bills are paid, the lights can be turned on and any local initiatives are taking place. We trust them to keep our schools running and our water clean. When people don't hold up their end of a job they ran to convince you they should have, what should we do? We can't kick everyone out of government but we can work on making sure that people realize being a member of local government is a responsibility and not a privilege. The public's life is in your control and local government is not just a stepping stone to better things.

I like to think of our government as a collection of Leslie Knope's trying to look after us, but I fear its not and it is our responsibility to change that. We can all vote, we can all run for office ( assuming you can fund it and don't get me started on that). As a community we are responsible for others and I feel like in our politicized times we often forget that. I'm excited to keep going on with this course to discuss further the responsibilities of the engineer in this equation, but ethics do not just fall on you as an engineer. They rely on you evaluating the community you live in and deciding what it should look like.

Who's job is it to be ethical and to keep others in line? In this blog we'll explore that question along with other ethical challenges that we all may face in the workplace.