DIYbio Research Articles

Trust Architectures in Research

The research enterprise depends on trust, especially trust in data reliability and ethical conduct of research. This trust is accomplished via systems, or “architectures,” that do the work of ensuring trustworthiness in research when individuals are not able to assess it for themselves. In the United States and many other countries, national laws or regulations constitute the research ethics trust architecture. But new research methods, such as citizen science, DIY biology, biohacking, or corporate research, avoid such regulations because they draw on new means of funding, disseminating, and conducting research. This challenges the sufficiency of the traditional approach and requires us to revisit how we generate trust in the research enterprise. In this article, I discuss how new research challenges the existing trust architecture, offer some necessary elements of trust architecture in general, and use citizen science as a case study to illustrate how new, ethically meaningful trust architectures could be built.

What it takes to make it: profile and characteristics of DIY bio laboratory founders

ABSTRACT As important antecedents of the emerging DIY laboratory movement, the aspects of profiles and characteristics of those pioneers who establish DIY laboratories have remained under-researched in extant literature. In order to address this issue and explore common profiles and characteristics of DIY laboratory founders, by employing content analysis, this paper analyses secondary data on 23 founders/co-founders of eight DIY bio laboratories that are publicly available (DIYbio.org). The results reveal that a common profile of a DIY bio laboratory founder is someone most likely to be highly educated (often times PhD), with experience and expertise in the field of science and has strong ideological beliefs. Additionally, the founders/co-founders have characteristics of entrepreneurship, research, ideology and community that strongly advocate for open source sharing of scientific information and for the democratisation of science.

Valuating Practices, Principles and Products in DIY Biology

In this article, we study do-it-yourself (DIY) biology, by looking in particular at the different forms of valuation within the DIY biology movement. Building upon recent work in economic sociology and the study of valuation, we take as case studies different projects developed by DIY biologists. Our approach is attentive to the moments when these projects are valued, i.e. during competitions, investment pitches, and crowdfunding campaigns. The projects analyzed involve both market valuations (with investments, products and potential markets) and non-market valuations (be they social, ethical or cultural). Our key argument is that value is produced through distributed and heterogeneous processes: products, practices, principles and places are valued at the same time. We show that there is not only a valuation of technical and production aspects (well highlighted in the key literature on valuation), but also a valuation of social links and of specific forms of organization. Both are inseparable - it is neither the object nor the context in themselves that are valued, but the “good-within-the-context-of-its-making”: the production of vegan cheese or biological ink and the places and communities of DIY biology or future markets are valued. The valuation practices we examine aim at producing an interest in a threefold sense: a general interest (a public good), an interest for the public (its curiosity), and a monetary interest (by making people financially participate).

DIY BIOLOGY: ПЕРЕУСТАНАВЛИВАЯ ГРАНИЦЫ НАУКИ

DIY BIOLOGY: ПЕРЕУСТАНАВЛИВАЯ ГРАНИЦЫ НАУКИ

If you want something doing, do it yourself

The Biochemical Society's panel discussion event, DIY Biology, explored the possibilities for citizen science and collaborative research projects.

The FBI and biohackers: an unusualrelationship: The FBI has had some success reaching out to the DIY biology community in the USA, but European biohackers remain skeptical of the intentions of US law enforcement.

The FBI and biohackers: an unusualrelationship: The FBI has had some success reaching out to the DIY biology community in the USA, but European biohackers remain skeptical of the intentions of US law enforcement.

DIYbio and citizen science

DIYbio and citizen science

Stranger Visions: A Provocation

Genetic monitoring has been the subject of science fiction for years, but with biotechnology's decreasing costs and increasing accessibility through DIY bio and community laboratories, it's becoming a reality. In this new world, the very things that make us human, such as hair, skin, and saliva, become a liability as we constantly shed them in public, leaving artifacts for anyone to mine for information.