Responsible Conduct of Research Training for Engineers: Adopting Research Ethics Training for Engineering Graduate Students

Abstract

Two key challenges haunt ethics teaching: relevance and universalism. Demands for relevance, whether relevance is judged based upon association to a local standard (e.g., national professional association code) or to the specific demands of a professional workplace, pull the teaching and study of ethics towards the particular. Calls for a global standard pull ethics teaching and scholarship toward high level principles that can be difficult to justify at a level students and grants funding agencies find applicable. Particularity and specificity complicate demands for global standards or universal norms, while exposition at a universalized level frustrate application in a relevant context. This chapter investigates the structure of research ethics as exemplified in the Singapore Statement, then turns to a case study of RCR students in Hong Kong to provide an example of RCR receptivity among students in engineering and other fields.