Transcript here - Responsibility

Introduction to RRI+
Arie Rip
(University of Twente)
Responsibility Forum Workshop
Brussels, 11 February 2014
Why are we here?
• Because the European Commission is drawing
on the term ‘Responsible Research and
Inovation’ in its activities and is pushing
(“nudging”) to get it implemented
• So a top-down dynamic ...
• But a variety of actors are keen to link up with
RRI
• Not only philosophers and sociologists who see
new intellectual business opportunities
A multi-level phenomenon
• An umbrella term; with a variety of governance
arrangements and practices underneath it
• So different levels:
- policy and societal discourse;
- institutions and arrangements;
- ongoing/evolving practices (of scientists, industrialists,
also civil society actors)
• Interaction between levels
• Also broader contexts and secular changes
(recontextualization of science in society; unwillingness
to accept every new technology)
Responsible innovation,
at different levels
Macro-level: societal
discourse
policy
Ideas about future world; division of moral
labour
EU Code of Conduct for Responsible NanoST
Research
Meso-level:
funding agencies
branch organzations
consortia
[New roles/repertoires]
Dutch MVI; extended impact statements
code of conduct etc
ELSA as integral part; Constructive Techn. Ass’t
Micro-level:
scientists (in the lab)
Industrialists/firms
“relevance”, ‘fictive script’
Corp. Social Resp., transparency
Shaping responsible development
• Nanotechnology – exploiting technoscientific
opportunities while being ‘responsible’
(whatever that may mean)
• Pressure from policy level to do so, but also
initiatives from nanoscience consortia (TA in
Dutch NanoNed and NanoNext )
• May be impression management, but this
can/will have implications
• Nano-labs start presenting themselves as
responsible
Thanks to Erik Fisher, STIR project, for drawing my attention to this poster.
Pan back to the 1530s
• In 1531 the Italian mathematician Nicola Tartaglia developed a
theory about the relation between the angle of the shot and where
the cannon ball would come down. He thought of publishing the
theory, but reconsidered: “The perfection of an art that hurts our
brethren, and brings about the collapse of humanity, in particular
Christians, in the wars they fight against each other, is not
acceptable to God and to society.” So he burned his papers (he had
told his assistant Cardano about his theory, and Cardano published
it a few years later).
• But he changed his position, as he described in his 1538 book Nova
Scientia. “The situation has changed, with the Turks threatening
Vienna and also Northern Italy, and our princes and pastors joining
in a common defence. I should not keep these insights hidden
anymore, but communicate them to all Christians so that they can
better defend themselves and attack the enemy.”
• The structure of the argument (including the topos of powerful
knowledge) still applies, but is not an individual decision anymore.
Back to the present
• In the Journal of Infectious Diseases, October 7, 2013, Barash
and Arnon published their finding of the sequence of a newly
discovered protein, but without divulging the actual
sequence.
• “Because no antitoxins as yet have been developed to counteract the
novel C. Botulinum toxin,” wrote editors at The Journal of Infectious
Diseases, “the authors had detailed consultations with representatives
from numerous appropriate US government agencies.” These agencies,
which included the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the
Department of Homeland Security, approved publication of the papers as
long as the gene sequence that codes for the new protein was left out.
According to New Scientist, the sequence will be published as soon as
antibodies are identified that effectively combat the toxin.
• Cf. also how publication of sensitive details can be prohibited by the US
National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, as in the case of the bird
flu research by the Rotterdam team led by Fouchier.
Division of moral labour
• There are organisations, articulated rules,
mutual dependencies
• These add up to an evolving de facto division
of moral labour (Shelley-Egan and Rip 2012)
• ‘Responsibility’ discourse is a way to articulate
and stabilize the division-of-moral-labour
aspect of our social order (Rip 1981)
• The term is relatively recent (1782 in France,
1787 in Britain), and linked to emergence of
bourgeois society. (‘Responsible’ is older.)
‘Responsibility’ language
• Also used to attribute praise and blame, cf.
Ravetz’s aphorism:
• “Scientists take credit for penicillin, but
Society takes the blame for the Bomb”
• And there is prospective responsibility, a duty
to do certain things (and avoid others)
• Responsibility for progress, even if the
powerful knowledge can also be misused
• So: various strands that can be taken up in RRI
The new discourse
• Note the shift from ‘responsibility’ to
‘responsible’, and applied to processes of
research and innovation, rather than actors
• Contrast with earlier debates and actions, in
particular with the the atomic scientists after
1945, and chemists and pollution (visible from
the 1960s onward)
• Thus: blaming (and praising) less important
than how to arrange our handling of emerging
technologies (distributed!)
Consider RRI as an attempt at
social innovation
• New and uncertain, distributed ...
• Requires institutional changes, and subcultural changes. How to “push” this?
• Soft command and control (EU/Member
states stipulating codes of conduct for RI)
• But also a business proposition: to extend
‘social licence to operate’ because of
credibility pressures in/of society
The innovation is still an open
proposition
• But actors, at various levels, start referring to
the notion of responsible development and
innovation in nanotechnology,
• And more generally about new technologies
• Some research funding agencies (in Europe)
and research consortia require project
proposers to say that they will conform to the
EU Code on Responsible Nano-Research
RRI becomes specified – reduced?
• Utilitarian ethics (as in NNI definition):
maximize technology’s positive contributions
and minimize negative consequences.
• A neo-liberal version: avoid causing harm, then
everything is OK
• Narrative of containment: keep hazards at bay,
then no problem with a new technology
What about
• ELSA studies etc. as partial compensation
for
old
pushing new (“promising”) technology
technologies?
A change in handling new technologies?
• Not just nanotech. Precursors: in Human Genome
Project (ELSI component), but also chemical
industry’s Responsible Care Program. And now
consideration of synthetic biology, geo-engineering.
• Will this continue? And if so, what form will it
take? At the moment, we see reductions to
create some tractability:
• Focus on upstream (to assure acceptance!?)
• Focus on risk issues (which appear to be more
tractable than societal and ethical issues)
• Add: evolving narratives of praise and blame
Governance arrangements
• Evolving de facto governance, outcome of ongoing
struggles, and part of them
• Can become settled in institutional arrangements
(cf. division of moral labour)
• Such arrangements need to be evaluated, because
of lock-in (path dependencies) while society (and
technology) change: “Is it (still) a good
arrangement?”
• Such governance arrangements refer to the de facto
Constitution of our “technology-imbued” societies
In conclusion
• I’ve taken you on a journey from the new
discourse of RRI to changing practices, and
back up to evolving divisions of moral labour
and the Constitution of our societies
• A key role is played by intermediary actors
(collective organisations, funding agencies,
monitoring bodies)
• Whatever we come up with today has to be
located in these evolving multi-level
developments