Examination of ethical issues related to access and use of information
and data in the Internet age, for the general student, with special
emphasis on ethical issues that apply to the proper use and
interpretation of scientific and technical information.
This course is designed to present and to engage students in activities
and discussion related to the serious ethical issues arising from the
widespread distribution of data and information in the Internet age.
Students will gain a deeper understanding of ethics as it applies to
the use and interpretation of data in the sciences. In addition to
statistical and scientific case studies, students will be presented
with practical ethical challenges that they may face in their future
corporate, government, or academic employment.
As an added benefit, students will acquire HSR
Board Certification through completion of the free on-line
GMU Human Subjects Research (HSR) training course.
to develop an understanding of the following: open data policies; access and
use of private versus public data sources; data ownership and
proprietary rights; proper use versus misuse and abuse of statistics;
deduction, induction, and inference from scientific data;
objectivity versus bias in the interpretation of scientific data;
data falsification and cases of scientific fraud; the proper
referencing of sources versus plagiarism; and the ethical (and legal)
handling and use of human subjects research data.
