Ethics of Science, Technology, and Design
51E00400 Ethics of Science, Technology, and Design
Time and place:
Wednesday 16:00-19:00, PC-350
Aalto University School of Economics, main building (Runeberginkatu 14-16)
Teaching period:
September 8 – October 20, 2010
Level of the Course:
master’s and doctoral level
Teacher in charge:
Kristina Rolin, Professor and Research Fellow, Department of Marketing and Management (Philosophy), School of Economics. E-mail: kristina.rolin(at)hse.fi.
Visiting teachers: to be announced
Workload:
160 hours (6 credit points)
Lecture and in-class discussion assignments (18 hours): Students are expected to attend the lectures (6 x 3 hours). In the class students are expected to work on group discussion assignments.
Required reading and writing (100 hours): Students are expected to spend two days a week on preparing for the next class meeting (the reading assignments and the response papers).
Preparing for the final exam (39 hours).
The final exam (3 hours): The final exam will be on the last day of the classes (October 20).
Learning outcomes:
The course aims to provide tools that enable students to analyze and respond to ethical challenges they are likely to encounter in applied research and development work, both in public and private sector. After taking the course students are familiar with good scientific practice and procedures for handling misconduct and fraud in science as they are defined by the National Advisory Board on Research Ethics in Finland. More importantly, they understand why research ethics is an integral part of producing scientific research of high quality as well as good technology and design. Students will have sufficient understanding of contemporary ethical theory in order to make sound moral judgments in complex social, cultural, and natural environments.
Content:
Students will understand the distinction between basic research, applied research, and development work. Students will become familiar with such notions as plagiarism, guest authors, and ghost authors. They will be introduced to ethics as a subfield of philosophy. Students will be introduced to the values that are constitutive of science as a particular kind of social practice: (1) theoretical virtues are the desirable features of knowledge claims in science; (2) the norms of the community are the norms which should guide interactions among the members of scientific communities; and (3) the virtues of the scientist are the desirable features of scientists such as honesty, conscientiousness, and competence. Students will be introduced to the long-standing debate about the ideal of value-free research. They will understand what is meant by the objectivity of scientific knowledge. We will discuss cases where moral and social values have played a role in research design and the presentation of research results. Other themes discusses in the course include ethics of risk analysis, moral justification of intellectual property rights, values in design, the ethics of user-driven innovation processes, moral values in research and innovation policy, public understanding of science and technology, and the role of experts in public policy.
Assessment Methods and Criteria:
Reading response essays (50% of the course grade): For 5 of the reading assignments, the students are asked to write a short essay (1-2 pages) engaging some issues in the reading. The goal of these essays is to help students read in an engaged way and to encourage them to develop their own ideas on the course material. Instructions for the essays will be distributed in the class one week before the essays are due. The main instructor will grade the essays (pass/fail) and give feedback for students.
Final exam (50 % of the course grade): The final exam will evaluate students’ understanding of the material from assigned readings, lectures, and class discussions. It includes both short answers (e.g., definitions of key concepts and central principles in research ethics) and longer essays which require students to apply the course material to case studies.
Literature:
to be announced in the class and the course homepage in Optima
Study Material:
to be distributed in the class and the course homepage in Optima
Substitutes for course:
none
Homepage:
https://optima.discendum.com/hse
Prerequisites:
none
Grading:
The course will be graded on the scale 0-5 (5 = excellent knowledge; 4 = very good knowledge; 3 = good knowledge; 2 = satisfactory knowledge; 1 = sufficient knowledge; 0 = fail).
Registration for Course:
WebOodi
Language of Instruction:
English
Further information:
Enrollment max 50 students on first come basis. Please confirm your registration on the first day of classes.
