Programme structure

Intercalated BSc Medical Sciences with Philosophy, Medicine, and Society explores activities helping to shape modern medicine: (1) ethics and philosophy of science, (2) science policy and governance, and (3) science communication and engagement.

The programme prescribes 2.0 units of the 4.0-unit curriculum. This includes two compulsory modules (1.0 units) from three choices (one policy, one engagement, and one philosophy), plus one independent research project (1.0 units). An additional 2.0 units are chosen from a prescribed list of option modules. Of these, one 0.5-unit module from elsewhere may be substituted, provided it contributes to a coherent programme of study. Not more than one option module may be at the intermediate (2000) level.

Core modules

Core modules are compulsory.

HPSC3026 Research Project

units: 1.0 unit
organiser: Clarke, Brendan
assessment: literature survey (1,200 words) (10%); presentation (work-in-progress) 20 minutes (15%); dissertation (10,000 words) (75%)

Students undertake an independent research project of their own design in the field of science and technology studies. An appropriate supervisor is selected in consultation with the module tutor. Discussion of research is undertaken during regular tutorials.

Past titles include:

Benefits of Pluralism: A Perspectival Articulation. Focussing on the Stories of Paul Feyerabend (winner of the HAB Simons Project Prize 2010)
Lister’s Anatomy Between Artistic And Scientific Representative Practices
Securing Secrets: British Cypher Security in the Second World War
Prediction, Explanation, and “Self-Caused Explanations”
Compromising on Evidence: When Patients Are Too Sick to Wait for a Clinical Trial
Belief in the Health Care Provider and Treatment Outcome
A Critique of the Current Criteria for Involuntary Hospitalisation of Patients with Mental Disorder
History of Yoga as a Medical Treatment in the UK
The Feminisation of British Health Care
Did the Scientific Revolution have a Significant Influence on the Decline of Witch-hunting in Europe by 1700?
Has the Development of the EBM Hierarchies of Evidence Encouraged 'Cookbook' Medicine and Has this Been Positive
What is, and are the Causes of, Modern Day Depressive Illness?

Core modules

Select two of these three modules. The remainder may be selected as an option.

HPSC2001 Policy Issues in the Life Sciences

units: 0.5 units
organiser: Balmer, Brian
assessment: three essays (2,000 words) (33.3% each)

Provides a critical overview of policy issues arising from developments in the biological sciences. The module covers a variety of issues, including: medical research policy, biotechnology and public policy, debates about the social acceptability of recombinant DNA research, biology and its publics, controlling biological weapons research and animal experimentation.

HPSC2002 Science in the Mass Media

units: 0.5 units
organiser: TBC
assessment: two essays (2,000 words) (25% each); one exam (3 hours) (50%)

An introduction to media studies for those interested in relations between science and the media. What science gets covered in print, on TV and online? How and why is that material selected? How can we investigate the effects of media coverage on public knowledge of or attitudes towards science? The module gives a short survey of relevant empirical and theoretical work in media studies, and public engagement with science.

HPSC2020 Philosophy of Medicine

units: 0.5 unit
organiser: Clarke, Brendan
assessment: one essay (3,000 words) (50%), exam (3 hours) (50%)

This module provides students with an overview of the exciting field of philosophy of medicine. Based on case-studies drawn from contemporary medical practice, the module will engage with six conceptual issues of major importance to medicine. In brief, these are the question of discovery (of diseases and treatments), with causation, with modelling, with complexity, with classification, and with evidence-based medicine. The teaching will be a mixture of lectures, giving topic overviews, critical reading of philosophical and medical sources, and seminar activities, intended to allow students to autonomously develop their analytical skills.

Optional modules

Not all HPSC modules are offered every year. In May each year we announce our provisional offer for the upcoming session. For more information <www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/hpsc>.

HPSC2006 Science and Ethics

units: 0.5 units
organiser: Illari, Phyllis
assessment: one essay (3,000 words) (50%), exam (3 hours) (50%)

An exploration of ethical challenges arising in recent scientific activity. Some challenges will focus on the results of research. Others will concern the process of research itself and science’s efforts at self-regulation. This is a practical, issues-based course. Emphasis also will be on current events and fundamental principles.

HPSC3002 Science, Warfare and Peace

units: 0.5 unit
organiser: Balmer, Brian; Agar, Jon
assessment: one essay (3,000 words) (50%), exam (3 hours) (50%)

Focuses on twentieth century weapons usually designated as ‘unconventional’ or ‘weapons of mass destruction’. This module aims to place such technologies with social, political, and historical contexts. In addition to thinking about how science, technology and warfare have shaped each other, this module also considers the changing role of the scientist in relation to the state, and considers broader themes such as the arms control, ethics, popular culture and the body in relation to war.

HPSC3003 Communication of Scientific Ideas

units: 0.5 units
organiser: Miller, Steve
assessment: feature article (40%), report (30%), radio show (20%), news article (10%)

A practical course in communicating science based around three key tasks: (1) writing science news and feature articles suitable for New Scientist or the science pages of the ‘quality’ press; (2) carrying out a radio interview, such as might be broadcast on Radio 4’s Science Now; (3) reporting on a piece of novel science to a committee of MPs who need to be aware both of the science content of the work and potential policy issues. Issues in the public understanding of science are discussed from this practical standpoint of communication.

HPSC3011 Advanced Science Writing

units: 0.5 units
organiser: TBC
assessment: four pieces of coursework (10%, 20%, 20%, 50%)

A course in science feature writing, exploring in depth aspects of structure, style and explanation.

HPSC3014 Magic to Science

units: 0.5 units
organiser: Gregory, Andrew
assessment: one essay (3,000 words) (50%); exam (3 hours) (50%)

Explores the changing relationship between astrology, alchemy, magic and science from the ancient Greeks to the present day. Topics include: magic and science in the ancient world, Christian attitudes to magic and witchcraft, the origins and development of astrology and alchemy, the anthropology of magic, magical world views

HPSC3027 Evolution in Science and Culture

units: 0.5 unit
organiser: Cain, Joe
assessment: one essay (3,000 words) (50%); exam (3 hours) (50%)

A historical survey of evolutionary thinking from the Enlightenment to the present. Content includes the history of scientific ideas and the context for those ideas. It also considers the influence of evolutionary ideas, especially Darwinism, on society and visa versa.

HPSC3028 Advanced Philosophy of Medicine

units: 0.5 unit
organiser: Clarke, Brendan
assessment: two pieces coursework (3,000 words) (50% each)

This module will be a reading group. The first half of the term will be structured around Ludwig Fleck's seminal 1935 work Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, as well as critical articles examining this work. As well as presenting some fascinating insights into the development of scientific medicine, the book makes several broader claims for the role of cultural conditioning in shaping science in general. It therefore anticipated many philosophical approaches more usually associated with later twentieth century philosophy of science. Focused, informal, teaching sessions during class time will be given in support of these core philosophical issues. The second half of the term will then look to develop the kinds of influence that this work has had in the years since its publications. These sessions will therefore each be structured around a single reading, selected by participating students, that illuminates these connections. Throughout the term, students will be expected to work collaboratively, including giving presentations on the readings at the weekly seminars.

HPSC3029 Medicine, Disease and History

units: 0.5 unit
organiser: MacLehose, William
assessment: one essay (3,000 words) (50%), exam (3 hours) (50%)

This course addresses the changes and developments in Western medicine from the Ancient Greek world to 1700. The course will discuss the varieties of theory and practice of medicine, the understandings of the body and illness, and the historical contexts in which medicine can be understood in the pre-modern world, including classical Greek and Roman society, medieval Islamic and Western cultures, and Renaissance and early modern periods.

HPSC3030 Science and Global History

units: 0.5 unit
organiser: MacLehose, William
assessment: one essay (3,000 words) (50%), exam (3 hours) (50%)

This course studies the history of medieval Islamic and western Christian science from a comparative perspective and focuses on the transfer of knowledge from the ancient Greek world to the Arabic and then to the Latin West from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries. Approaching the subject thematically, we will consider the following fields of scientific knowledge: geography, cosmology, astrology, technology, medicine and their connections with religion, broadly construed. In the process, we will examine the underlying political, social, cultural, institutional and intellectual structures of these societies as well as the intercultural interactions.

HPSC3032 Investigating Contemporary Science

units: 0.5 unit
organiser: Agar, Jon
assessment: essay 1 (4,000 words) (60%), essay 2 (2,000 words) (40%)

STS aims to provide students with the intellectual and other skills to analyse trends in science and technology. This course asks students to use – and develop further - these skills to investigate deeply, assess and present their findings on a chosen issue in the contemporary politics of science. As a third year module, this course has been designed to make most use of acquired skills and knowledge in a way that moves students towards the world of work. In particular, the kinds of capacities demonstrable in a successful completion course are similar to those needed by an investigative reporter or a researcher for a think tank.

HPSC3033 Communicating Science in Digital Environments

units: 0.5 unit
organiser: Bultitude, Karen
assessment: coursework 1 (1,800 words) (30%), coursework 2 (2,400 words) (40%), presentation (20 minutes) (30%)

This module focuses on creative and exciting contemporary approaches to communicating scientific topics via digital means. Teaching focuses on new media and online communication mechanisms, for example podcasting, blogging, social media and/or Citizen Science approaches. Existing global patterns of Internet use will be explored, including both demographic and device-oriented trends (such as the rise of mobile Apps). Students will critique contemporary examples of projects that utilise digital environments, as well as develop their own ideas. Across the module practical opportunities to explore the various techniques will be balanced with conceptual models of effective communication.

HPSC3034 Science, Art, and Philosophy

units: 0.5 unit
organiser: Ambrosio, Chiara
assessment: coursework 1 (poster) (40%), coursework 2 (3,600 words) (60%)

This module explores the interactions between science and art from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Its philosophical focus is the notion of "representation", conceived as a crucial common link between scientific and artistic visual practices. Integrating the history and philosophy of scientific and artistic representations, the course will address a broad range of issues. These will include questions on the nature and role of visual representations in scientific and artistic practice, what counts as "objective" and "accurate" representation, when and how images count as "evidence", and whether the relations between science and modernism contribute to overturn the common sense view that "art invents, science discovers".

HPSC3036 Governing Emerging Technologies

units: 0.5 unit
organiser: Stilgoe, Jack
assessment: coursework 1 (blog posts, total 3,000 words) coursework 2 (essay 3,000 words) (50% each)

This course goes inside technology to discuss its political and ethical dimensions. Technologies shape our future in powerful and largely unaccountable ways. Are they inevitable, or can we control the technologies that we get, anticipate their implications, prevent hazards and share their benefits? Why do we have iPads and space shuttles but we don’t all drive electric cars and have clean drinking water in the developing world? Were the Fukushima nuclear meltdown and the financial crisis just accidents? What could regulators have done to prevent them? As science introduces new risks and ethical dilemmas, what should governments do to control research, publication, patenting and innovation? The course will teach students to think and write clearly and critically about technology. It will be assessed through an essay and a series of short blog-posts.

HPSC3037 Philosophy of Information

units: 0.5 units
organiser: Illari, Phyllis
assessment: coursework (100%)

This is a new module for 2013-14. Description to come.

HPSC3038 Surveillance in Modern Society

units: 0.5 units
organiser: Kroener, Inga
assessment: coursework (100%)

This is a new module for 2013-14. Description to come.

HPSC3039 Medical Ethics

units: 0.5 units
organiser: TBC
assessment: coursework (100%)

Medical ethics encompasses the practical application of ethics, as a philosophical enterprise, in clinical settings and in the governance of medical practice. The module examines difference schools of moral principles as well as both classic and emerging case studies. Issues can include: values in medicine, informed consent, privacy and confidentiality, control and resolution, truth-telling, conflicts of interest, and futility.

HPSC3040 Science, Politics, and the State in Russia and the Soviet Union

units: 0.5 unit
organiser: Werrett, Simon
assessment: one essay (5,000 words) (80%), presentation (15 minutes) (20%)

How are science and politics related? What role does science play in governance, and how is science itself best governed? Is scientific knowledge apolitical, and if it is politically-informed, what consequences does this have? This module explores the interactions of science, politics, and the state through a study of science in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. From the reign of Peter the Great (1696-1725) to the time of Perestroika in the 1980s, Russian science always operated close to the state. Using cases from Russian and Soviet history, we will explore a variety of approaches for understanding relations of science, politics, and the state. Some comparative studies will show that science and politics are equally integrated in western liberal democracies.

Page last modified on 07 jan 13 16:52 by Joe Cain

UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS)
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UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies

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