Venue: Emmy Noether Seminar Room
Class Timings: Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays from 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
First Meeting: 12 August 2024
Course Description:
The Craft of Research (Research Methodology) and Critical Thinking: What constitutes science, the idea of so called scientific method and the limitations of thinking about science that way. What constitutes a good research problem and the art of identifying one. Critical thinking and critical reading of scientific literature. Use and abuse of statistics within scientific literature.
Scientific writing: General attitudes to writing including how to deal with the “writers’ block”. Content and structure of scientific documents of various kinds (proposals, reports, papers, reviews etc.). The nature of abstracts, the canonical IMRaD structure and sensible deviations from it. Style in scientific writing. Other forms of writing including research summaries, reply to referees, etc.
Scientific Talk and Presentation: Introduction to rhetoric or the art of persuasive argumentation. What a scientific talk should and should not include given a specific audience. Structure of the conceptual structure and the structure of visual aids. Delivery of talks and presentations.
1. Appreciate the variety of motivations behind the scientific endeavour, understand various historical, sociological and philosophical ideas about science (including scientific method) and comprehend the limitations of these ideas.
2. Understand how research problems and the methods to solve them are chosen and learn how to adopt a focused critical approach towards the scientific literature.
3. Comprehend the different approaches towards ethics and how they are employed in thinking about research ethics, and understand the advantages/limitations of value-based vs rule-based approaches.
4. Understand the different formats of scientific text (proposals, reviews, papers, referee reports, responses, etc.) and employ the structure and style appropriate to the context.
5. Understand the principles of rhetoric, its phases (invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery), its modes (ethos/pathos/logos) and know how to use them effectively in scientific arguments/communication.
- Teacher: Loganayagam R