Bad Actors

Since beginning to run my particular program at work, I've worked with more bad actors than ever before. That is, people who do not seem to be operating in good faith, who do not want to do a good job, who try to cheat in some way.

Another one was unearthed today. It's disheartening. And of course, when I do work -- carefully going back and checking on things, trying to draw out analysis and metrics -- and then discover something like this, it puts the whole program back. It invalidates a lot of the data from that source. I don't particularly like doing work that sets everything back, either.

There are a lot of ethical questions at work. I work in forestry, it would be nice if those ethical questions revolved around forest management. They mostly don't; the major forest management questions need to be put to the public in some way since foresters can't really make those decisions on crown land, at least not at my level(more trees and/or controlled burns vs a greater number of natural wildfires? human interference including culling vs natural boom, bust, and possible extinction cycles? end goals vs aesthetics? experimental interventions vs known interventions vs no interventions? etc etc).

In the meantime most of the ethical questions centre around personal conduct and compliance with bureaucracy/various levels of rules. In my case it often revolves around how good sample data is. Regardless of the downstream applications of that data, I find I have very little patience for folks who are cavalier about their data, and who knowingly put their name to bad work.

I feel so let down and generally discouraged. The first time I was surprised, the second time I was concerned, but now... bah. I wanted to give this person the benefit of the doubt. I tried. It was not warranted.

I have clearly not run far enough away to live in the woods.

Bad Actors

Since beginning to run my particular program at work, I've worked with more bad actors than ever before. That is, people who do not seem to be operating in good faith, who do not want to do a good job, who try to cheat in some way.

Another one was unearthed today. It's disheartening. And of course, when I do work -- carefully going back and checking on things, trying to draw out analysis and metrics -- and then discover something like this, it puts the whole program back. It invalidates a lot of the data from that source. I don't particularly like doing work that sets everything back, either.

There are a lot of ethical questions at work. I work in forestry, it would be nice if those ethical questions revolved around forest management. They mostly don't; the major forest management questions need to be put to the public in some way since foresters can't really make those decisions on crown land, at least not at my level(more trees and/or controlled burns vs a greater number of natural wildfires? human interference including culling vs natural boom, bust, and possible extinction cycles? end goals vs aesthetics? experimental interventions vs known interventions vs no interventions? etc etc).

In the meantime most of the ethical questions centre around personal conduct and compliance with bureaucracy/various levels of rules. In my case it often revolves around how good sample data is. Regardless of the downstream applications of that data, I find I have very little patience for folks who are cavalier about their data, and who knowingly put their name to bad work.

I feel so let down and generally discouraged. The first time I was surprised, the second time I was concerned, but now... bah. I wanted to give this person the benefit of the doubt. I tried. It was not warranted.

I have clearly not run far enough away to live in the woods.

Piglets

Sparky's piglets came last night. She had 4 little ones, 2 red and 2 black and white. She wasn't feeding them yet when I left, I might have to separate her from Rapunzel and Nox's young ones.

They are cute.

Piglets

Sparky's piglets came last night. She had 4 little ones, 2 red and 2 black and white. She wasn't feeding them yet when I left, I might have to separate her from Rapunzel and Nox's young ones.

They are cute.