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Reflection Course: Scientific Conduct

Course
2023-2024

Admission requirements

The student must have had practical research experience before the course.

Description

Periods: 18 September 2023 - 22 September 2023 and 15 April 2024 – 19 April 2024

By creating new knowledge, biomedical 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, fabrication, falsification and plagiarism 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 and interactive lectures and in workgroups with assignments this Master Reflection Course aims to reach the following objectives.

Course objectives

The student:

  • Shows insight in codes of scientific conduct and the (inter)national rules and regulations of research with humans and animals as an aid in developing good sense of research integrity

  • Shows awareness of subjectivity that occurs in the scientific research process by reflection on and discussion of cases of scientific misconduct and questionable research practice

  • Shows writing skills (in the English language) of issues that transcend biomedical research

  • Shows communication skills in order to present coherently and convincingly while taking into account modern presentation and writing principles

  • Is able to show professional conduct: being critical yet constructive and eager to improve oneself and doing so contributing to the learning process of other students

Timetable

All course and group schedules are published on MyTimeTable.

The exam dates have been determined by the Education Board and are published in MyTimeTable.
It will be announced in MyTimeTable and/or Brightspace when and how the post-exam feedback will be organized.

Mode of instruction

Lectures and work groups, which will all be English-spoken.

Assessment method

Summative assessment:

  • Written reports

  • Participation in peer feedback

  • Presentation during workgroups

  • Participation in discussions

Reading list

Will be assigned by the teachers during the course.

Registration

Registration for FOS courses, H2W, Scientific Conduct, Course on Lab Animal Sciences and CRiP takes place in lottery rounds in the beginning of July. After the lottery rounds: if you want to register for a course you are kindly asked to contact the student administration at masterbms-courses@lumc.nl.

Contact

masterbms-courses@lumc.nl

Remarks