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ISIS/STHV INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS A Stampede of Zebras Based on his extensive experience as a senior scientist at the National Institute of Health, Dr. Robert G. Martin wrote "A Stampede of Zebras" and incorporated into it many of the issues of ethical research practice. The play has been read at numerous universities as an introduction to ethics training for both faculty and students. With funds from the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth College and the Program in Science, Technology, and Human Values at Duke University, as well as a generous grant from the National Science Foundation, "A Stampede of Zebras" has now been staged and recorded as a video production. The 40-minute video is now made available at cost to all departments and research institutes interested in conducting seminars and workshops in research ethics. Professional Ethics and Engineering Professional Ethics and Science These videos are designed to enhance professional ethics training for science and engineering students. These videos present scenarios that illustrate common ethical dilemmas. "Professional Ethics and Science" and "Professional Ethics and Engineering" were produced by the Program in Science, Technology, and Human Values. Academic Integrity - The Bridge to Professional Ethics View preview clip (requires Quicktime plugin) Engineers and scientists live and work in a world of increasing technical and social complexity. With this complexity comes the need to make ethical decisions about issues that a few years ago could not have been anticipated, and for which there is little guidance in the professional codes of ethics. Recognizing the growing importance of ethics in professional engineering, the Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) continues to insist that ethics play an important role in the education of young engineers. Similarly, the National Institutes of Health have established requirements for ethics training for all students in departments receiving federal training grants. Societies such as AAAS and Sigma Xi have active programs in helping to promote the ethical conduct of scientists. Teaching professional or research ethics in the classroom is, however, a difficult task. The students for the most part have never been engineers and few of the younger graduate students have had the experience of conducing and funding a research project. They have never had to meet payroll, compromise with a contractor, or certify the competence of a colleague. How then can students possibly understand what professional ethical decisions are all about, and how can they begin to appreciate the complexity of these problems? How can engineering educators introduce such basic concepts as client loyalty if the students have never had a client? How can the principle of an individual's responsibility to the engineering profession be taught if the students have never been professional engineers? The basic premise of the videotape "Academic Integrity: A Bridge to Professional Ethics" is that ethics are only relevant in a real context -- with cases that are familiar to the audience. The videotape contains four scenarios about academic integrity, representing four typical cases of ethical decision-making by students. The cases are not simple, and the resolutions are not provided. Following the showing of each scenario, students are encouraged to discuss the issues and to develop their own resolutions. The videotaped scenarios represent problems they commonly face in their everyday life as students, and thus the idea of ethical decision-making should be familiar to them. The principles highlighted in all four scenarios are, however, basic principles of professional engineering as well. The videotape provides the bridge to a discussion of professional issues, and similar scenarios in professional ethics are depicted in the tape entitled "Professional Ethics in Engineering" and a third tape, "Professional Ethics in Science." For example, if the audience is engineering students, and if the problem of loyalty to a classmate is discussed and analyzed, it should follow that loyalty, as a moral principle, is equally important for engineers and scientists in their professional roles. Thus loyalty to a client or to a colleague, instead of being discussed in the abstract or through unfamiliar engineering examples, is approached from the vantage point of loyalty as a general moral principle, and then applied to professional engineering. Thus academic integrity is used as a bridge to professional ethics. |
