Abstract
The extent to which technology impacts society and its development has sharpened worldwide awareness of the importance of accompanying technological progress with an advanced reflection on the ethical and social implications of this process. Constructive approaches such as Technology Assessment (TA), Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), or lately, “Open Science, Open Innovation, Open to the World”, attempt to integrate ethical and social considerations into the pathways of progress from the roots upwards. Scientists, as important enactors in scientific progress and technological innovation, are asked to participate in the discourse on ethical and social implications of their work, but find it challenging to define their role in it. This comment attempts to motivate scientists to be “responsible” and “engaged” by shedding light on their expected contributions to making constructive S&T discourse more sustainable.
Highlights
Scientists’ work schedules have become even heavier in recent years. In addition to their activities as professional practitioners with core competences in clearly defined scientific and academic niches, they are asked to communicate their work with non-experts, to consider the ethical and social implications of their work, in particular, and of science and technology (S&T), in general, to promote and support “sustainability”, and to collaborate with regulators, social scientists and ethicists in a web of economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts and interests (Barry and Born, 2013)
Every EUfunded research project since the “framework program 6” agenda, for example, obligatorily includes a work package on “Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI)” to implement a more “mature” analysis of these issues as a basis for European Union (EU)-wide regulatory governance and policy-making on the one hand, and to facilitate a more democratic governance procedure and incorporate public participation to examine the risk issues arising from S&T policy innovation on the other (Hullmann, 2008)
Experiences have shown that many scientists could not familiarise themselves, yet, with their shifted roles and the expectations resulting from that
Summary
Scientists’ work schedules have become even heavier in recent years. In addition to their activities as professional practitioners with core competences in clearly defined scientific and academic niches, they are asked to communicate their work with non-experts, to consider the ethical and social implications of their work, in particular, and of science and technology (S&T), in general, to promote and support “sustainability” (whatever that is taken to mean), and to collaborate with regulators, social scientists and ethicists in a web of economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts and interests (Barry and Born, 2013). In view of a normative framework that is constituted by value and belief systems can the following be defined: what counts as “risk” and what as “benefit” (and for whom), what has the power to serve as an convincing fact or argument to solve a conflict, and what kind of incident or concern has the potential to “mobilize” sufficient awareness and attention so that it finds its way into the contemporary S&T discourse agenda (Grunwald and Saupe, 1999) In this respect, Ethics is a fundamental and crucial element of S&T discourse, for example, in ELSI research and modern TA concepts such as “constructive TA”, “argumentative TA” and “Parliamentary TA” (Braunacker– Mayer et al, 2012; Lucivero, 2016).
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