Dejection and our right to engage with controversial science
Controversial science, even the early-stage speculative stuff, should be unveiled and open for discussion. I should like to defend my work and defend good science communication.
Nobody likes having their hard work criticised, especially in public. This is what happened to me when a person suggested a fact sheet I had written on nanotechnology was a work of fiction and government propaganda. He then gesticulated with his hands to the room full of people that is was worthy only of being torn up and tossed.
Dejection is a hard pill to swallow, not to mention the necessity to quell an attack instinct to jump up and defend my work. Unfortunately, it was not the forum to be discussing science communication theories, so I offered the lame, but probably appropriate, response that he email me with his criticisms and I would be happy to consider them.
Defending Science Communication
The room was full of people representing a wide range of interest groups – from civil liberties, unions and the environment. The reason we were all in the room is irrelevant to the point of my post which is to defend the fact sheet I wrote and the reason why I wrote it. I don’t wish to personally knock the Trasher as his voice and that of the group he represents are valuable ones in the dialogue. This is just me disagreeing with his opinion.
In the break I took my opportunity. I discovered the Trasher of my work made his judgement based on the first sentences only, which read as follows:
“In a few decades we will see the merging of human and machine, a world where there is no distinction between the biological and the mechanical; illness will be eradicated, and human beings will live to 150 and have radically enhanced physical and mental capabilities.”
According to the Trasher, this is science fiction and rubbish, which technically it is – at the moment, which is why it reads as a prediction for what might be in a few decades.
I proceeded to suggest he read the next sentence that suggested this was highly speculative opinion. Link to full fact sheet here. I followed that even though this was opinion (a highly publicised one, at that) there was real and well-funded research (a lot of it public funds) by legitimate and well-respected research groups world-wide working on making these predictions reality.
Upstream engagement
The speculative predictions made in the first sentence may fail to become reality for a few decades, possibly 100 years, even at all. But there are some initial stages of research that are highly likely to become reality in the next 40-50 years. There will doubtless be treatments for many illnesses that will make them effectively eradicated, there is already a scientific consensus that children born today will live on average seven years longer and there is considerable research looking at using carbon nanotubes (and other nanotechnologies) to repair damaged neurons in the brains of people with Parkinson’s and other neuronal diseases. The next logical step, albeit a gigantic one, is cognitive enhancement: if we can successfully repair neurons, why not rewire or add to the existing ones? This is all real, and whether we think it abhorrent or not the community has the right to be aware of it and participate in a discussion about it – earlier in the scientific process rather than later, a process referred to as “up-stream engagement”. See below for references.
Keep ‘em in the dark?
So based on the Trasher’s assumption, we should refuse to let people know what science is being done and the purposes it is being done for. Logically from this, we are therefore also supposed to deny people to right to have a say about the direction of scientific research and how this knowledge is applied.
The point of my fact sheet, as with all TechNyou publications, is to give people the opportunity to become aware of what science is being done, what the potential applications and issues are, and then armed with this knowledge participate in an informed dialogue about the merits or otherwise of this science.
I am open to constructive criticism and really am willing to amend a publication when justified, but in this case I stand by the content, at least in the context of Trasher’s criticisms.
If anyone has constructive criticism of any TechNyou publications, I am all un-enhanced ears.
References
There is a wealth of academic literature on upstream engagement. Here are just three papers/reports that might be of interest:
Regula Valérie Burri, Coping with uncertainty: Assessing nanotechnologies in
a citizen panel in Switzerland. Public Understand. Sci. 18 (5) (2009) 498–511
Rebecca Willis, James Wilsdon, See-through Science. Why public engagement needs to move upstream. DEMOS 2004
Joyce Tait, Upstream engagement and the governance of science. EMBO reports 10, S18 – S22, August 2009.
And a TechNyou take on it