Public need to be involved direction of science
Getting the non-scientist public involved in less chatting and more real deliberation on how to apply scientific knowledge is the call from a recent report.My dilemma is how to make it happen.
The more direct discussion and engagement I have with the public – scientists and non-scientists – on emerging technologies such as nanotech, the more I think the public can and should be involved in helping guide the direction of scientific research. This involvement should be at the early stages of the research rather than the end bit where it is ready to be, or already has been thrust into the marketplace.
The question is how to do it and would a reasonable cross section of the public be prepared to be involved. I have no doubt there would be hands-up from a few vocal and concerned minority groups, but although welcome, they hardly represent a cross-section.
There is plenty of literature out there backing the idea of ‘upstream engagement’, as it has been called. One of the latest reports is from the DEEPEN project: “Reconfiguring responsibility”.
Its just a stick
The report emphasizes a strong need to find mechanisms that involve the public helping guide the direction of research towards goals that are broadly acceptable to society. My challenge is to find the mechanism(s). The thing that nags my conscience, however, is that should I or anyone succeed in having the Australian public involved in guiding research in a particular direction, the same knowledge can be used for a completely different purpose elsewhere that may be unacceptable to Australians.
Having unloaded this personal moral predicament on you, I am aware that this predicament has always existed, probably since humans started using tools. The first time someone sharpened a stick and, through some trial and error, realised this would be really cool to throw at and kill animals to feed the family only to find that his neighbour over the hill found what he saw as a better application and used it to spear him and steal his wife. But I put the nagging conscience on ice because if we were to halt scientific research because of fear of what others might do with this knowledge, humans would never have advanced past simply using a stick to keep the fire going.
Stop the chatter
In the DEEPEN report two of their ten lessons for public policy are to move public debate from conversation to deliberation and move away from speculation. So far, in Australia most engagement about nanotech (or any emerging technology) has been limited to conversation: we arrange a forum, workshop or meeting and the public get to ask questions and we have a chat. And we don’t get much deeper than highlighting the potential revolution that is about to change society or the massive risk to human health and environment – ah, but I generalise somewhat here. Then all depart their separate ways and someone writes a report and that is as far as it goes. There are a few exceptions that have involved government, industry, research, and NGO’s sitting in a room and trying to pin down policy areas that all agree need to be worked on. To some extent they probably still count as conversations rather than deliberations and how many of the agreed on ‘action items’ will filter down into action or change, I am unsure, but it is a start. Reports on a couple of these initiatives can be found on DIISR’s site
Day dreaming
As for speculation, I think this is a good thing: dare to dream, free the mind, think outside the square…and other such clichés – or to quote Jim Dator, University of Hawaii 2005, “Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous.” So speculation should stay, but we also need to focus on the realities and decide the direction of the science that is happening in labs today. It may not be the stuff of Hollywood, but some of it comes close – human enhancement technologies (improving cognitive performance or strength) are likely to be accessible in my lifetime (I am a forty-something). And this is what I want to get the public involved in – just got to work out how and if it will work. All thoughts or speculations about how and if this might be done gratefully accepted.
Jason Major
gntis-australia@unimelb.edu.au