Abstract
Responsible research and innovation (RRI) features the dialog of science “with society,” and research performed “for society,” i.e., for the benefit of the people. I focus on this latter, outcome-oriented notion of RRI and discuss two kinds of problems. The first one concerns options to anticipate the future course of science and technology. Such foresight knowledge seems necessary for subjecting research to demands of social and moral responsibility. However, predicting science and technology is widely considered impossible. The second problem concerns moral evaluation. The benefit or harm produced by certain research and innovation achievements is often hard to estimate. Against this background of uncertainty in factual and moral assessment, I explore opportunities left for RRI. First, RRI should contribute to maintaining a wide range of approaches. Second, judgments about RRI should draw on zones of convergence among the variety of research approaches pursued. Third, decisions about implementing a technology should be revisable. Fourth, the more specific inclusion of demands from society should be reserved to technology development. Fifth, in many respects, the social compatibility of a new technology is due rather to the social context than the inherent features of the product. Favorable circumstances are transparency, representation of all relevant parties, and procedural fairness. As a result, some of the benefits and detriments of research and innovation can be identified without detailed knowledge of future findings.
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Notes
See Lengwiler (2008) for an overview of various such schemes, their historical changes, and the pertinent literature. See Stilgoe et al. (2013) and Fautz et al. (2016) for considering participatory formats. Carrier and Gartzlaff (forthcoming) provide a review of the more recent literature on participatory RRI and present the results of a survey on attitudes on RRI in the scientific community.
It might be worth emphasizing that the validity of any such prediction about future paths of technology is dependent on human action. Such predictions can always be self-destroying in the sense that people refuse to accept the relevant technology. The choices left to society and politics for shaping the future can certainly not be infringed by projections of technology development (Nordmann 2007, pp. 31–34; Nordmann 2014, pp. 90–01; Stilgoe et al. 2013, p. 1571). In a similar vein, scientific and technological projections may be thwarted by social features such as carelessness or abuse (Weckert and Moor 2007, pp. 136–138).
David Resnik (2017, pp. 66–73) advocates the use of the inductive-risk scheme for dealing with the legitimacy of publishing the full H5N1 virus strain (see above). However, his extensive discussion of the various factors relevant for such a decision fails to arrive at a recommendation. This inconclusive ending confirms the limited usefulness of the inductive-risk scheme for coming to terms with complex moral challenges arising from scientific research.
It is worth noting that the adequate use of the precautionary principle demands in both versions some foresight knowledge. The minimum knowledge required concerns possible side-effects. In the trade-off interpretation the demands are even higher. Thus, the invocation of the precautionary principle remains within the consequentialist approach to RRI (see Sect. 2).
Some authors complain that real processes of this sort are characterized by information asymmetry, power imbalance and lack of transparency (Blok and Lemmens 2015, pp. 23–24). Yet, this only makes the challenge more urgent to work out procedural schemes that promote these value commitments.
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Acknowledgements
Preliminary versions of the paper have been delivered at half a dozen occasions. I am grateful to the various audiences involved for their helpful questions and criticism. I am indebted, in particular, to my Bielefeld colleagues Minea Gartzlaff and Marie Kaiser for their valuable advice. The paper has grown out of the NUCLEUS Project that was supported in the Horizon 2020 program (GA-Nr.: 664932). NUCLEUS has been led by Alexander Gerber (Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences).
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Carrier, M. How to conceive of science for the benefit of society: prospects of responsible research and innovation. Synthese 198 (Suppl 19), 4749–4768 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02254-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02254-1