1 Ethics in Project Proposal & Scheduling A Research Project Proposal is: 1. A request to an agency for money 2. A contractual agreement (if funded) 3. 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?