Understanding the Principles of Scientific Research

During the BSc and MSc education students learn lots of scientific facts, but do they know how science works? In this course the basic principles of the methodology used in the natural sciences are taught. The aim is to let the student contemplate concepts like ‘truth’, ‘experiments’, ‘models’, ‘confirmation/falsification’ and make the student aware of the limitations of the ability to make objective observations. Also basic concepts of error analysis, correlations and probabilities will be taught and ethics and integrity in science will be discussed.

The course is meant for MSc and PhD students in any of the natural sciences who are performing scientific research projects. It will consist of lectures, discussions and tutorials.