Brown grad students will soon receive an 'ethical education' in what Dean of the Graduate School Sheila Bonde described as "thou shalt nots," thanks to a grant received through the National Science Foundation and the Council for Graduate Schools.
The grant, provided by the National Science Foundation and awarded to institutions selected by the Council for Graduate Schools, targets students in the physical sciences, specifically the engineering, chemistry and physics departments. Though the program was officially introduced at the grad school's orientation in September, no classes have been organized for this semester.
Grad students will be instructed on how to handle ethical issues during research and in their professional careers.
"This ranges from doing research papers and how you carry out your experiment and all those kinds of issues. Issues involved may be so severe as plagiarism or faking data, or may be more minor issues that are encountered more often," said Chung-I Tan, professor of Physics and chair of the department.
Bonde summarized the approach the Grad School is taking as "thou shalt not" rules, for example "thou shalt not plagiarize" and "thou shalt not mistreat animals." Bonde said some of the issues that may be discussed are the "relationship of scientific fact to culturally-based belief systems, the obligations and ownership issues related to data, the societal impacts of developing a particular drug or compound and the ethical obligations of the research in developing that compound."
So far, some of the grant has been used to "review and revise the programming for orientation as it related to ethics, including implementing a new set of sessions at orientation that talked about ethics in the context of research welcoming new students into their new roles of research professionals," Bonde said. First-year grad students will be the first to experience the new curriculum.
"We are trying to make this be a spiral staircase method. It isn't just a shot in the arm once," Bonde said. The introduction of ethics will begin during orientation and be revisited again throughout a student's graduate studies.
"Different disciplines may handle this slightly differently," Tan said. "For instance, chemistry will organize a course after first semester and physics would like to engage students at the beginning of second year - that's when students begin their research work. At that stage, we would like to remind them about the various issues involved."
Tan said ethics issues are something every student should be aware of, but that each department would likely structure their course offerings differently. Tan said this belief is rooted in the idea that "in your professional research, there are issues with people at some point being dishonest in terms of reporting your data and analysis." The teaching of ethical education will help graduate students learn appropriate behavior for both themselves and others, and what to do if they suspect others of being dishonest.
Tan said professors are "trying to find the best way to implement the idea, and how to bring the issue of ethics as part of the dialogue within graduate program teaching." Overall, professors involved are supportive of the program and believe it is an important aspect of scientific research. "I am supportive of the NSF pilot program and believe that the University is taking the right steps to address this important area," said Professor of Engineering Eric Suuberg.
Though this type of ethics training program has previously been a part of the life sciences curriculum for students conducting research on human subjects, the development of similar training for the students in the physical sciences has been slower.
Grad students will soon be surveyed about their response to the orientation aspect of the program. But most grad students contacted by The Herald were either unaware of the program or had no opinion on it. "(The program doesn't make) a lot of sense to me. Could be my fault, but why would you worry about (the ethics program)?" wrote Jie Bao GS in an e-mail to The Herald.
