A Resource on Digital-Imaging Ethics

Greetings again. I hope September is starting well for you.

This month, in addition to teaching a lot, I’m busy with a writing project due October 1. The project includes updating some chapters that were published several years ago.

Today I updated a brief chapter on ethical aspects of scientific writing. I decided to add a paragraph on using digital images in scientific publications.

“The advent of digital imaging has given unethical researchers new ways to falsify findings,” I wrote. “And ethical researchers may rightly wonder what manipulations of digital images are and are not valid.”

To help readers, I cited an article published this year in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics. This article, titled “Avoiding Twisted Pixels: Ethical Guidelines for the Appropriate Use and Manipulation of Scientific Digital Images”, includes 12 guidelines. The guidelines and materials regarding them also appear on a website.

Among the main points of the guidelines are the following:

• Realize that digital images are data. Work with them as carefully as you would work with other data.
• Work only on a copy of the image data file. Always keep the original file safe and unchanged.
• If digital images will be compared, acquire them under identical conditions and process them in the same way.
• Avoid using forms of image file compression that degrade data.

The article and website provide detailed guidance for following these guidelines and the others. I hope that some of you find this resource useful.

Wishing you a good week— Barbara