Bruno Latour once argued that science laboratories actively modify the wider society by displacing crucial actors outside the laboratory into the “field.” This article turns this idea on its head by using the case of geothermal energy utilization to demonstrate that in many cases it is the experimental setup outside the laboratory that is there first, with the activities normally associated with a laboratory setting only being decided upon and implemented post hoc. As soon as the actors involved perceive unknowns (...) and uncertainties, these are relocated to various kinds of closed laboratories to be dealt with in a more controlled environment. This is done, for instance, by inviting stakeholders to laboratory-like settings or by analyzing the geochemical composition of fluids in laboratories. Thus, the risk-laden production of new knowledge by means of real-world experimentation amounts to a practice of relocating the context of discovery in society to laboratories of justification sometimes defined as such post hoc. Experimental processes in society can then be conceptualized as “real” experiments and laboratory activities as merely temporarily subordinated components of the larger experiment. (shrink)

We must resist thoroughly reframing climate change as a health issue. For human health–centric ethical frameworks omit dimensions of value that we must duly consider. We need a new, an environmental, research ethic, one that we can use to more completely and impartially evaluate proposed research on mitigation and adaptation strategies.

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)

There has been much discussion of the moral, legal and prudential implications of geoengineering, and of governance structures for both the research and deployment of such technologies. However, insufficient attention has been paid to how such measures might affect geoengineering in terms of the incentive structures which underwrite scientific progress. There is a tension between the features that make science productive, and the need to govern geoengineering research, which has thus far gone underappreciated. I emphasize how geoengineering research requires governance (...) which reaches beyond science’s traditional boundaries, and moreover requires knowledge which itself reaches beyond what we traditionally expect scientists to know about. How we govern emerging technologies should be sensitive to the incentive structures which drive science. (shrink)