Course Overview

OBJECTIVES:
Establish a rigorous experimental approach in biomedical research.
Develop critical analysis skills. Integrate statistical analysis in
scientific research.

Learning Achievement

Competence

Course prerequisites

Grading Philosophy

Course schedule

- Notions on Epistemology: Uncertainty, Falsifiability, Paradigm
shift, Induction, Deduction. Establishing Causality and Proof in
Science. The importance of reproducibility. 
- Defining the Hypothesis, the variables tested and the experimental
outcomes. The reductionist approach. The most parsimonious
explanation. Outlining the experiment as an hypothesis test; defining
positive result and negative result. Identifying false positive and
false negative results (type 1 and type 2 errors). 
- The notions of reference and normalization; choosing the
appropriate control group. Identifying the sources of experimental
variation (biological variation, technical variation). Identifying
sources of errors (cognitive biases, logical fallacies, base rate
neglect, experimental biases).
- Ethical aspects of experimental design: Regulations, Scientific
integrity. 
- Integrating statistics in experimental design. Statistics notions
(Significance, Magnitude, variability). Statistical hypothesis testing
(defining the null Hypothesis, what is the p-Value, pValue testing,
what not to do with the p-Value, choosing the appropriate statistical
test). Important statistical procedures in Biomedical Research
(Bonferoni correction, Bradford-Hill criteria, Kaplan-Meier
estimator).

Course type

- Theoretical lectures - 12 hours  - Tutorial classes - 14 hours

Online Course Requirement

Instructor

Other information

Language of instruction: English

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