Teaching Responsible Conduct Responsiblya

Everyone learns at an early age to pay more attention to what people do than what they say. One of our favorite cartoons is by Edward Argo. It portrays a young child standing in the corner facing the wall and saying to his stuffed animal friend, " The same people who told me the stork brought me are making me stand here for lying. " You can substitute your own favorite example of the discrepancy between words and actions in lecture halls and the workplace. But this sums up why we believe that the " how " of instruction on the responsible conduct of research (RCR) is so much more important than the precise details of what is included in the curriculum. What follows below is our philosophy on how training in RCR might best be provided. We then comment on some of the federal and institutional guidelines that have played an important role in promoting the introduction of RCR training into academic programs, suggesting that they are an important driving force for ethics education but also partly what led to some of its most serious—and contentious—problems. The most common approach for teaching most things, including RCR, is lecturing. And certainly that can be a useful method for delivering large amounts of material to sizeable groups of individuals. But, all too often, lectures quickly devolve into an exercise in dictation, providing little opportunity to engage with the material and really learn. Should this be pointed out to an instructor, the response is often " I can't take time for discussion, there is just too much to teach! " We, too, have been guilty of this mindset, forgetting the extensive research indicating that little of the material delivered in a purely lecture format is retained. There are many other problems with that approach, as well: The instructor may not be sufficiently knowledgeable in the subject matter or skilled in the art of teaching; the composition of the class may be highly heterogeneous and thus not amenable to a " one size fits all " approach; and the material may be presented out of context and, thus, its significance may be difficult to grasp or may even be undermined. Lecturing is simply not an effective way to teach anything, let alone research ethics. We describe an alternative approach below. We also recommend Camille Nebeker's essay in this issue, which provides an excellent …