Abstract
The graduate course in research ethics in the Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering at the National University of Singapore consists of a semester long mandatory course titled: “Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity.” The course provides students with guiding principles for appropriate conduct in the professional and social settings of scientific research and in making morally weighted and ethically sound decisions when confronted with moral dilemmas. It seeks to enhance understanding and appreciation of the moral reasoning underpinning various rules and legislative constraints associated with research subjects and procedures. Further, students are trained to critically analyse cases and issues associated with scientific misconduct preparing them to act in a responsible and effective manner should they encounter such cases. The diverse background and training of the cohort also provide a unique setting and opportunity for student-initiated collaborative interdisciplinary learning. This article offers a reflective account of the course and some preliminary insights into learning outcomes.
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Notes
NIH Notice Number: NOT-OD-10-019, November 24, 2009.
NGS (http://www.nus.edu.sg/ngs/) administers PhD research scholarships to a university wide, elite cohort of PhD students in the sciences and engineering, whose research topics have an interdisciplinary emphasis. The students enrolled in NGS have diverse nationalities and research backgrounds. They go through a semester of laboratory rotations and eventually settle down to conduct their PhD project work within the facilities of their respective supervisors. The latter are tenured and tenure-track professors with primary appointments in one of the university’s faculties (including Science, Engineering, Medicine, Computing, Dentistry, Public Health and others), and who are also appointed NGS faculty based on the interdisciplinary nature of their work. NGS manages student enrolment, supervisory as well as thesis advisory arrangements, and conducts the PhD qualifying and thesis examinations. The school facilitates the academic and professional development of the student, and provide interdisciplinary training through a series of core and elective coursework modules.
The second and third cases are crafted by the authors.
The students are from diverse backgrounds with differing modes of publication, and we noted that. Those from several branches of engineering and computing publish conference papers, which are typically more focused and shorter that a typical paper in the journals. All modes of publication should nonetheless have the same authorship criteria.
In discussing human subjects and material related issues we are keenly aware that students in the class are from a heterogeneous background, and work in different sub-disciplines in the sciences and engineering. As such, while the materials and time spent may be considered an under-treatment, the emphasis should clearly be different from a canonical course in bioethics. Only a small number of students in the class uses, or are planning to use, human subjects or human materials in their work. A fraction of the class has never, and may not ever deal directly with human subjects or materials in their respective research careers. However, we think another group of students shall perhaps benefit the most. These are those working at the interfaces of the life sciences and engineering, for example the neuro-engineers, soft roboticists and others whose work have a physical science/engineering emphasis but also present a need to work with human subjects at some point, or to collaborate closely with clinical partners. These would also include those that are developing technologies to probe human stem cells, those developing therapeutic reagents based on human materials, as well as those that interrogate human samples with omics and informatics analyses. This latter group of students constitutes a large fraction of the interdisciplinary cohort of students within the school.
Other more common forms of misconduct that might occurs within a research setting, including vandalism, individual harassment, fund embezzlement and violation of safety and other research regulations were also discussed.
The Jack and Jill story casefile is jointly developed by Justine Burley and BLT.
“On Being a Scientist: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research”. Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy; Institute of Medicine; Policy and Global Affairs; National Academy of Sciences; National Academy of Engineering. The National Academic Press.
The survey is approved by the National University of Singapore’s Institutional Review Board (Reference code: S-17-104E).
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Tang, B.L., Lee, J.S.C. A Reflective Account of a Research Ethics Course for an Interdisciplinary Cohort of Graduate Students. Sci Eng Ethics 26, 1089–1105 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00200-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00200-w