Introduction

The objective of this course is to provide students with insights into how science works and how research is conducted. A good way to do this is to study a scientific discipline other than one's own. This intellectual and social distance helps to provide perspective on the readings and one's home discipline.

For this assignment, you will familiarize yourself with another scientific discipline by studying a scientist. The first step is to find such a person. This can be a graduate student, a professor, research assistant, industrial researcher, etc. Your subject should be in any field that is arguably a science, and is outside of what you are already familiar with. If you are stuck, see me.

Using the readings from this course as a starting point, look for elements of your subject's work practice that define them as scientists.

Data Collection

The study will primarily be conducted through interviews, though job shadowing is a possibility, if we have willing subjects. The questions will be determined through discussion in class.

Presentation

You will be presenting your findings in class on Monday, November 6. Each student will have 20 minutes to present her or his data.

Written Report

Your group will be submitting a written report with your findings. You will be granted a great deal of latitude in the length of the report, but 10 pages is a reasonable target. The written report must contain conclusions on an appropriate definition of science and scientists, a categorization of who and who is not an scientist. It should also include a discussion of where Informatics (or its sub-disciplines) fall in the categorization.

Schedule

Acknowledgement

Portions of this assignment have been adapted from Roberta Lamb, who gave a similar one as part of her ICS280 course in Spring Quarter, 2006.