The wrong people for the job?

Abstract

The ‘‘demands of the day’’ to which the title refers concern the problems associated with doing ethical anthropology in the twenty-first century. Rabinow and Stavrianakis intend to draw lessons for anthropologists from their experiences as participant observers attempting to collaborate with scientists on analyzing ethical issues in biological research. But they come across as naive and inexperienced about engaging scientists in ethical discourse and recount an unhappy tale illustrating exactly the sorts of things anthropologists should not do, without deriving any helpful suggestions from their mistakes. Seemingly unaware of the growing philosophical literature on ethics and values in science, the authors fail to draw on past work and attempt to re-create the field anew. Neither anthropologists nor philosophers interested in the ethics of scientific research will find much of value here. Rabinow and Stavrianakis were involved in two projects funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). From 2006 to 2010, Rabinow directed the component dealing with ethical and social aspects of research conducted by the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC), a consortium of biologists and engineers from University of California—Berkeley, University of California—San Francisco, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. SynBERC was involved in creating synthetic DNA that includes novel genes. Stavrianakis joined Rabinow on this project a few months after its inception. He was also invited to participate in a second project concerning the social consequences of nanotechnology, the SocioTechnical Integration Research project (STIR) at the Arizona State University Center for Nanotechnology in Society.