Admission requirements
Master students Biomedical Sciences and Bio-Pharmaceutical Sciences who have started the master before September 2018. The student must have had practical research experience before the course.
For students who have started the master on or after September 2018: This course is part of the new course Advanced Academic Skills and Career Orientation.
Description
By creating new knowledge, biomedical and biopharmaceutical scientists lay the foundation for the advancement of science, the better education of future researchers and medical doctors as well as improved health care. Often these advances and innovations also lead to economic boosts and increased prosperity. Scientific researchers have the inner urge to do the basic research, which one way or another is financed by society because it demands the innovations.
In the process of gaining new knowledge the researcher’s scientific integrity is vital, because in absence of proper scientific conduct, plagiarism, falsification, fudging and fraud can abide with negative consequences for the individual researcher, research group, institute, science and ultimately society at large.
But what is good scientific conduct? Are there next to our moral compass any recipes or guidelines for scientific conduct? Yes, to a large extent there are. Based on universal human moral values and ethics, well accepted guidelines have been developed in the biomedical research area with some firmly grounded in legislation. Researchers can thus finance, design, conduct and report scientific research in a morally just way. For a variety of reasons, however, an individual researcher may deviate from the path of good scientific conduct and then things can go awry. How to recognize and correctly deal with (suspicion of) scientific misconduct is crucial for maintaining personal and institutional scientific integrity. In essence it is an issue of dealing with dilemmas.
In a number of plenary interactive lectures and in two small scale workgroups with assignments this Master Reflection Course aims to reach the following.
Course objectives
The student:
will be introduced to Codes of Scientific Conduct and the (inter)national rules and regulations of research with humans and animals as an aid in developing good scientific conduct
will become aware of subjectivity and dilemmas in the scientific research process by reflection on and discussion of model cases and cases from the student’s own research environment
will practice discussion (in the English language) of issues that transcend biomedical and biopharmaceutical research
Timetable
This course starts in September and in February with a theoretical lesson and two workshops. The third workshop will be in spring and fall. The specific schedule is announced on the Brightspace module of Advanced Academic Skills and Career Orientation.
Mode of instruction
Lectures and work groups.
Assessment method
Assessment of presentation and participation during the discussions; two reports that the student has to write (pass/no pass); one PowerPoint presentation that has to be prepared prior to the second workshop
Reading list
Will be distributed and or assigned by the teachers during the course.
Registration
Application via uSis.
Contact
Coordinator: Prof. dr. H. Irth (h.irth@lacdr.leidenuniv.nl)
Remarks
For students who have started the master on or after September 2018: This course has become part of the new course Advanced Academic Skills and Career Orientation.
If you started the master before september 2018, you will still have to complete this course for 1 EC.
For this course a limited amount of spots is available. The study adviser may decide to give priority to some applicants, based on the starting date of their master programme, study delay, and order of registration for this course.