A Survey of Ethics Courses in U.S. STEM Bachelor of Science Programs

This article explores the frequency with which scientific ethics courses are available to biology, chemistry, and
physics students for credit towards their B.S. degrees in United States undergraduate institutions. After examining undergraduate catalogs for ethics-related course requirements and elective offerings in the fields of biology, chemistry, and physics (along with each discipline’s sub-degree-level concentrations), we identified each relevant course as either “focusing on scientific ethics” or “including scientific ethics at some level.” We categorized each institution by governance type (public or private) and size (large or small). We found that scientific ethics courses are offered infrequently among most institution and program categories, and tend to include scientific ethics as a secondary focus. Additionally, we found that scientific ethics courses are most frequently offered to biology students at large public institutions, and least frequently offered to physics students at large private institutions.