Currently, there is an ongoing “replication crisis” in science that could be helped with improved documentation and data-tracking. The crisis arises because it has been found that “many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate or produce”. This is a huge problem because the scientific method relies on the ability of other scientists to replicate and verify experiments. Although some of the crisis can be attributed to bad actors (i.e. scientists forging data), it was found that 50% of scientists were failing to replicate their own research. A huge part of the problem is the scientific problem with the “publish or perish” culture in academia.
Engineering (and other science) faculty have a lot of pressure to publish scientific papers in order to keep their jobs and achieve tenure. Unfortunately, this pressure can lead to engineers taking shortcuts and not adhering to good scientific practices. Similarly, as a professional engineer in the workplace, you may feel like you have an unrealistic deadline and are rushed to finish your work.
Excel is a great tool that when used properly, can show how data was used to calculate results. This is also why its really important to use formulas and address cells as opposed to typing in numbers. If your spreadsheet never shows which values you used to determine your results, it would be really difficult for someone to recreate your results. Your professors will often stress the importance of "showing your work" and that is because it is necessary to be able to see how you obtained an answer so that it can be replicated. With Excel, the way you show your work is by properly using formulas and addressing cells.
Consider you are an employee at an engineering firm and imagine you are given a design task that has significant safety concerns but your boss gives you an unreasonably short deadline. Your boss says you might have to cut corners to turn it in on time...
What do you do? Do you go over you boss’s head and talk to higher-ups? Is there a limit to how dangerous the design has to be before you do that? What if it wouldn’t kill anyone but someone might get hurt? Think of some different scenarios and explain.
