This paper presents an experimental approach for engaging undergraduate STEM students in anticipatory ethical reasoning, or ethical reasoning applied to the analysis of potential mid- to long-term implications and outcomes of technological innovation. The authors implemented two variations of an approach that integrates three key components—scenario analysis, design fiction, and ethical frameworks—into five sections of an introductory course on the social contexts of science and technology that is required of STEM majors. The authors dub this approach Creative Anticipatory Ethical Reasoning, (...) or CAER. Scenario analysis is a strategy emerging from business consulting for grounded analysis of plausible future trajectories to inform planning. Design fiction is a creative hands-on activity that blends science fiction and design prototyping to facilitate critical thinking with respect to the societal dimensions of a plausible future technology. The authors present the following findings: in each of the variations, students demonstrated significant engagement with CAER and a substantive shift in their conception of what constitutes responsible innovation and ethical conduct in science and technology. Specifically, their integration of ethical reasoning with stakeholder perspectives and scenario analysis reframed technologies, from unproblematic solutions for societal problems to socially-embedded forms of life that might diverge from designers’ intentions. This suggests that CAER could be a useful pedagogical intervention for expanding students’ ethical engagement to consider the potential unintended consequences of technological innovation. (shrink)

The identification of plausible epistemic approaches in science as well as the social problem definitions with which scientists implicitly work is essential for the quality of a deliberative public policy. While responding to the Nanofutures project, I will reflect on the essential elements of such a policy.

In anticipatory governance and responsible innovation, anticipation is a key theoretical and practical dimension for promoting a more responsible governance of new and emerging sciences and technologies. Yet, anticipation has been subjected to a range of criticisms, such that many now see it as unnecessary for AG and RI. According to Alfred Nordmann, practices engaging with ‘the future’, when performed under certain conditions, may reify the future, diminish our ability to see what is happening, and/or reproduce the illusion of control (...) over the future. Several authors have stressed that these critiques fail to capture the heterogeneous character of anticipatory practices, and yet research on the question of what particular kind of socio-epistemic engagements with ‘the future’ AG and RI aim to enact through anticipation remains fragmentary and their underlying rationale under-theorised. This article aims to advance the theoretical characterisation and problematisation of anticipation as key interventive tools for AG and RI. By distinguishing between four modes of anticipation and heuristically testing them against Nordmann’s critiques, the article argues that despite his assessment failing to recognise the heterogeneity of anticipatory practices considered valuable for AG and RI, it reinforces the relevance of performing certain modes of anticipatory exercises, namely critical-hermeneutic ones. Thus, anticipation continues to be a necessary heuristic dimension for AG and RI. More concretely, the article maintains that such anticipatory heuristics may find their radical constructive and critical-reflective character in the dynamics of inclusive scrutiny and negotiation about the plausibility and desirability of the envisioned or created futures. (shrink)

The emergence of new technologies regularly involves comparisons with previous innovations. For instance, analogies with asbestos and genetically modified organisms have played a crucial role in the early societal debate about nanotechnology. This article explores the power of analogies in such debates and how they could be effectively and responsibly employed for imagining and governing emerging technologies in general and nanotechnology in particular. First, the concept of analogical imagination is developed to capture the explorative and anticipatory potential of analogies. Yet (...) analogies do not simply stimulate imagination, they also restrict it by framing emerging technologies in specific ways. Thus, second, the article argues that tracing the rhetorical and persuasive power of analogical arguments is essential for understanding how analogies are constructed to legitimise assessments, funding policies, and governance approaches. Third, the article addresses factors that account for the persuasiveness of analogies in debates about emerging technologies. The article concludes with reflections on how analogical imagination and an enhanced analogical sensibility for framing and persuasive effects can foster responsible research and innovation. (shrink)

The identification of plausible epistemic approaches in science as well as the social problem definitions with which scientists implicitly work is essential for the quality of a deliberative public policy. While responding to the Nanofutures project, I will reflect on the essential elements of such a policy.

Novel targeted genetic modification (TagMo) techniques for plants have the potential to increase the speed and ease of genetic modification and fall outside existing regulatory authority. We conducted 31 interviews with expert-stakeholders to explore the differing visions they have for the future of plant TagMo environmental regulation. To guide our analysis we review the tenets of anticipatory governance in light of future studies literature on emerging technology, focusing on how to contribute to reflexivity by making explicit the assumptions within envisioned (...) futures. Our findings reveal that the environmental regulation futures articulated by expert-stakeholders could be classified into three categories—optimistic, pragmatic, and critical—based on their differing underlying assumptions concerning what constitutes environmental risk and the adequacy of existing U.S. genetically modified plant regulations. By gathering these diverse perspectives on the future and studying how they differ, we hope to further the anticipatory governance-informed engagement with regulation and foster a more productive discussion of plant TagMo regulation. (shrink)

In 2007 a social scientist and a designer created a spatial installation to communicate social science research about the regulation of emerging science and technology. The rationale behind the experiment was to improve scientific knowledge production by making the researcher sensitive to new forms of reactions and objections. Based on an account of the conceptual background to the installation and the way it was designed, the paper discusses the nature of the engagement enacted through the experiment. It is argued that (...) experimentation is a crucial way of making social science about science communication and engagement more robust. (shrink)

While the important challenges of public deliberations on emerging technologies are crucial to keep in mind, this paper argues that scholars and practitioners have reason to be more confident in their performance of participatory technology assessments (pTA). Drawing on evidence from the 2008 National Citizens’ Technology Forum (NCTF) conducted by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University, this paper describes how pTA offers a combination of intensive and extensive qualities that are unique among modes of engagement. In (...) the NCTF, this combination led to significant learning and opinion changes, based on what can be characterized as a high-quality deliberation. The quality of the anticipatory knowledge required to address emerging technologies is always contested, but pTAs can be designed with outcomes in mind—especially when learning is understood as an outcome. (shrink)

Science policy mandates across the industrialized world insinuate more active roles for publics, their earlier participation in policy decisions, and expanded notions of science and technology governance. In response to these policies, engaged scholars in science studies have sought to design and conduct exercises aimed at better attuning science to its public contexts. As demand increases for innovative and potentially democratic forms of public engagement with science and technology, so also do the prospects for insights from science studies to contribute (...) to policy agendas and institutional capabilities. This collection brings together an international set of scholars in science, technology and society who inquire into the meaning, efficacy and responsibility of engaged science studies scholarship as a public matter. (shrink)

Since it is now broadly acknowledged that ethics should receive early consideration in discourse on emerging technologies, ethical debates tend to flourish even while new fields of technology are still in their infancy. Such debates often liberally mix existing applications with technologies in the pipeline and far-reaching visions. This paper analyses the problems associated with this use of ethics as “preparatory” research, taking discourse on human enhancement in general and on pharmaceutical cognitive enhancement in particular as an example. The paper (...) will outline and discuss the gap between the scientific and technological state of the art and the ethical debates, pointing out epistemic problems in this context. Furthermore, it will discuss the future role of genuine ethical reflection in discourse on human enhancement, arguing also that such discourse needs to include a technology assessment—in the broad sense of the term—which encompasses, inter alia, anthropological perspectives and aspects of social theory. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to provide a discussion on the definitions and conceptual dimensions of Responsible Research and Innovation based on findings from the literature. In the study, the outcomes of a literature review of 235 RRI-related articles were presented. The articles were selected from the EBSCO and Google Scholar databases regarding the definitions and dimensions of RRI. The results of the study indicated that while administrative definitions were widely quoted in the reviewed literature, they were not substantially (...) further elaborated. Academic definitions were mostly derived from the institutional definitions; however, more empirical studies should be conducted in order to give a broader empirical basis to the development of the concept. In the current study, four distinct conceptual dimensions of RRI that appeared in the reviewed literature were brought out: inclusion, anticipation, responsiveness and reflexivity. Two emerging conceptual dimensions were also added: sustainability and care. (shrink)

The emerging field of synthetic biology, the designing and construction of biological parts, devices and systems for useful purposes, may simultaneously resolve some issues and raise others. In order to develop applications robustly and in the public interest, it is important to organize reflexive strategies of assessment and engagement in early stages of development. Against this backdrop, initiatives related to the concept of Responsible Research and Innovation have also appeared. This paper describes such an initiative: the construction of future scenarios (...) to explore the plausibility and desirability of potential synthetic biology innovations. We guided teams of synthetic biology students who participated in the large international Genetically Engineered Machines competition, in constructing scenarios aimed at exploring the plausibility and desirability of potential synthetic biology innovations. In this paper we aim to examine to what extent, and how, constructing such future scenarios contributes to RRI. In order to do so, we conducted observations and interviews to understand what kind of learning and reflection was promoted by constructing the scenarios in terms of four dimensions, which are discussed prominently in the literature on RRI: anticipation, inclusion, reflexivity and responsiveness. While we focus on how constructing future scenarios can contribute to strengthening RRI at a project level, we also consider how far our experiment may foster RRI in the iGEM competition in general, and perhaps even inspire constructive collaboration between ‘social scientists’ and ‘natural scientists’ in the context of larger scientific research programmes. (shrink)