Finished phase IIIa of the Research Orientation Course. It was a fascinating experience as usual. This time we had Shawky Galal, Youmna Tareef El-Kholy presenting and discussing with us Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper's philosophy of science. In an earlier session we watched Ordinary Fascism by Mikhael Romm and discussed it with Mrs. Arab Lotfy. Those sessions made the course very special.

Other sessions were about scientific reasoning, data management, tabular and graphical presentation of data and statistical analysis. Unfortunately we were going to have sessions about critical appraisal of scientific papers and ethics in medical research but things did not go as scheduled. Those two sessions will be added to phase IIIb together with several sessions about management.

Yesterday, we had a closing ceremony. Quite a humble one. Dr. Mohmed Abou Al Ghar, gave us an absorbing presentation about the history of the Egyptian University, the state of research in Egypt in the past and today and the state of academic independence.