Trainees are required to complete Oncology 715: Ethics in Science prior to being eligible for appointed to the Virology Training Grant.
Course Format. Oncology 715: Ethics in Science is a one-credit course supported by the Department of Oncology/McArdle Laboratory of Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This course includes prepared short in-person lectures followed by small group discussions to engage trainees using a case-study approach on commonly encountered, and ethical issues in, current biomedical research, methods of analysis of ethical issues, and policies relevant to the conduct of research. After a brief introduction to the topic by one of the faculty instructors, trainees breakout into small discussion groups. These student-led roundtable discussions are designed to allow each small group to develop well-reasoned morally based solutions to the ethical dilemmas being discussed each week.
Course Subject Manner (focus). This course covers the nine areas identified by NIH:
- Conflict of interest: personal, professional, and financial
- Policies regarding human subjects, live vertebrate animal subjects in research, and safe laboratory practices
- Mentor/mentee responsibilities and relationships
- Collaborative research including collaborations with industry
- Peer review
- Data acquisition and laboratory tools; management, sharing and ownership
- Research misconduct and policies for handling misconduct
- Responsible authorship and publication
- The scientist as a responsible member of society, contemporary ethical issues in biomedical research, and the environmental and societal impacts of scientific research for Biological Sciences graduate students