Scientific work requires specific ethical awareness. Hence, it is crucial to sensitize young academics already at an early stage of their scientific career for the pitfalls of scientific work and to promote an ethical attitude that prevents any scientific misconduct such as plagiarism or the fabrication or manipulation of research data. Against this backdrop, we are currently developing and carrying out teaching units and materials that are concerned with the safeguarding of good scientific practice in the curriculum of the history, philosophy and ethics of medicine. Within the scope of the project, we work with the student-centered teaching method of problem-based learning, in order to train students’ critical thinking competences, problem solving skills and self-directed learning competences.

The overall syllabus of the teaching project comprises six topics: 1. Theoretical foundations (historical background, guidelines, definitions …), 2. Scientific publishing (criteria for scientific authorship; order of authors; intellectual property …), 3. Empirical data (forms of empirical data; fabrication, manipulation and falsification of empirical data …), 4. Clinical research (human research; animal experiments; current guidelines; ethical and legal aspects …), 5. Personal interests (forms of interest; ethical principles …), 6. Scientific supervision and teamwork (advisor-advisee communication; duties and responsibilities of supervisors, team leaders, laboratory leaders; resolving conflicts with leaders and with colleagues …).

The courses are accompanied by a pre-post evaluation, with which we examine the participants’ knowledge and attitudes toward good scientific practice.

Project lead: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Florian Steger
Project assistant: Dr. Katharina Fürholzer
Duration: 2017-2018