This course is designed to promote the critical analysis skills necessary to be a successful scientist. Students read papers from the primary literature and discuss the experiments described. Questions addressed are:
- “What was the hypothesis?”
- “What were the experiments designed to test?”
- “What other information is necessary to interpret the experiment?”
- “Do the experiments accomplish their goals?”
- “What problems exist in the experiments?”
- “Where might you go from here?”
To develop critical analysis skills, the first group of presentations will emphasize one or two figures only in each paper. Subsequently, two to three papers will be assigned as a thematic group by each instructor and will be discussed sequentially.
Required in Year 1.