Risks to the Data
Author(s):
Caroline Whitbeck, Ph.D.
You are a new faculty member at Big U and are setting up your lab. Following the practice of your own thesis supervisor and remembering stories of lab data that was lost or accidentally destroyed when people took data out of lab, you plan to have all of your lab members record their observations in a bound lab notebook that is chained to the lab bench. One of your new colleagues points out to you that the experiments being done in the lab just below yours involve many combustibles and that lab has had several fires in the last five years. One was serious enough to damage the laboratory space you now occupy. Your colleague suggests that you make it easier to quickly remove the data in case of fire in your absence, and even to consider removing the lab notebook, when no one is working in the lab.
What do you do?
Cite this page:
Caroline Whitbeck, Ph.D.
"Risks to the Data"
Online Ethics Center for Engineering
9/11/2006 2:46:43 PM
National Academy of Engineering
Accessed: Friday, December 05, 2008
<www.onlineethics.org/CMS/research/modindex/resethpages/risks.aspx>