Course Director: Charles Mobbs
E-Mail: Charles.Mobbs@mssm.edu
Course Description:
Days & Time: Monday 4-6pm
(contact course director for detailed schedule)
Room: Ann 12-01
Start Date: 10/12/09
This is a required course for all first year students
This course meets for eight 2-hr sessions to explore a variety of ethical and policy issues that may arise in basic and clinical scientific research. Topics that are covered include scientific misconduct; mentoring; data management and record-keeping; ownership of data and issues of sharing data, reagents; responsible authorship (plagiarism, when to publish, redundant publications, different kinds of publication and journals) and peer review; use of human subjects or tissue in biomedical research; use of animals in biomedical experimentation; use of hazardous materials in research; conflict of interest; research grants, training grants, fellowships; and self-delusion in science. Trainees participate in this course in the fall semester of their first year of support. The format for each session is an initial half hr lecture followed by discussion period; all students are expected to read, in advance of the class, an assigned chapter in Frances L. Macrinas text, Scientific Integrity, An Introductory Text with Cases (Third Edition, 2005). The second half of the session involves a case discussion. The class is divided into small groups of 6-8 students who are asked to review under the supervision of a faculty member a case taken from the course textbook, after which each student is expected to write a one-page analysis of the case. In the final half hour of the session, each group presents their case and comments on their discussions. A single case is selected for a more in depth discussion among the students. The final assignment requires that students write their own case with questions and answers on any of the topics covered in class. Institutional experts, including the Director of the IRB (for human subjects research), ACVC (for animal research), and Technology Transfer (for the discussion on information technology), are invited to lead specific sessions. Attendance at all sessions is mandatory; any student who misses a session is required to write an essay or answer questions that cover central concepts of the session that was missed. Students are not allowed to make-up more than two sessions.
In addition, each training area is asked by the Graduate School to sponsor two values-related sessions for its faculty and students, usually including postdoctoral students as well as pre-doctoral students, each year. RCR education in the actual research setting is a critical component of the whole RCR program. All trainees are provided with copies of the specific policies of the School of Medicine Handbook for Research and copies of the following specific policies of the School of Medicine: responsibilities of authors and data retention, press relations, manuscript policy, policy and procedures on ethical practices in research (including procedures for handling allegations of misconduct in research and policy and procedures on protecting whistleblowers), use of Mount Sinais name, conflict of interest in research, policies on intellectual property (ownership and commercial development) and policy on harassment.
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