Ethics on the Laboratory Floor

Ethics on the Laboratory Floor

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Ethics on the Laboratory Floor Edited by Simone van der Burg IQ Healthcare, the Netherlands Tsjalling Swierstra Universiteit Maastricht, the Netherlands

Selection, introduction and editorial matter Simone van der Burg and Tsjalling Swierstra 2013 Individual chapters Respective authors 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-00292-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-43407-7 ISBN 978-1-137-00293-8 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137002938 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Contents List of Figures and Tables Notes on Contributors ix xi Introduction: Enhancing Ethical Reflection in the Laboratory: How Soft Impacts Require Tough Thinking 1 Simone van der Burg and Tsjalling Swierstra Three motives for checking scientific and technological development 2 Soft impacts and responsible innovation 4 The good life 7 The location of the laboratory 9 The contributions to this book 11 Part I Moral Philosophers in the Laboratory 1 Which Focus for an Ethics in Nanotechnology Laboratories? 21 Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent Introduction 21 The ethical turn in science and technology 22 The limits of the ELSI approach 23 Why ethics on the laboratory floor? 25 Epistemology as a detour towards ethics 28 Ethics of design 29 Decentring ethics 30 Towards a reflective equilibrium 31 2 Responsible Research and Development: Roles of Ethicists on the Laboratory Floor 38 Armin Grunwald Introduction 38 Constitutive dimensions of responsibility 40 Responsibility configurations on the laboratory floor 42 Roles of ethicists 48 Epilogue: Towards responsible R&D 53 v

vi Contents 3 The Multiple Practices of Doing Ethics in the Laboratory : A Mid-level Perspective 57 Marianne Boenink Introduction 57 Identifying ethics in the laboratory 58 What : Specifying 60 How : Reconstructing 62 Why : Probing 65 With and for whom : Broadening 67 Whither : Converging and aligning 69 Family resemblances (and differences) 71 Conclusion 76 4 Technology Design as Experimental Ethics 79 Peter-Paul Verbeek Introduction 79 Ethics: From assessment to accompaniment 80 Analysing the morality of technology 84 Anticipating mediations 85 Assessing mediations 88 Designing mediations 89 Design as material ethics 92 Conclusion: An example 93 Part II Case Studies 5 Co-shaping the Life Story of a Technology: From Technological Ancestry to Visions of the Future 99 Simone van der Burg Introduction 99 Photoacoustics and acousto-optics: A case study 101 Past ancestry 103 Visions of the future 106 Future orientation and past ancestry 110 6 Ethics on the Basis of Technological Choices 113 Xavier Guchet Introduction 113 Preliminary theoretical insights: Values and design 114 The case study: The remake of a bacterial flagellar motor in the laboratory 117 Conclusion 127

Contents vii 7 Environmental Ethics in an Ecotoxicology Laboratory 129 Fern Wickson Introduction 129 Context: The laboratory floor 131 Encountering environmental ethics in an ecotoxicology laboratory 135 Reflecting on my role and engagement in the laboratory 142 Conclusion 146 8 The Promises of Emerging Diagnostics: From Scientists Visions to the Laboratory Bench and Back 151 Federica Lucivero Introduction 151 Immunosignatures and the healthcare revolution 152 From the promise to the laboratory bench 154 Reconstructing the history of the concept 155 Between metaphors and research practices 157 What are immunosignatures? Articulating objects and concepts 158 The possible applications of ImSg 159 Fleshing out possible context of use of ImSg 161 Different contexts and different values 162 The learnt lesson from the case study 163 9 Dramatic Rehearsal on the Societal Embedding of the Lithium Chip 168 Lotte Krabbenborg Introduction 168 Dramatic rehearsal as a soft intervention 169 Dewey on dramatic rehearsal 172 CTA+ workshops to anticipate the co-evolution of science, technology and morality during the R&D phase of newly emerging technologies 173 The lithium chip and its indeterminacies with regard to societal embedding 176 Dramatic rehearsal in practice 177 Preparing and rehearsing a joint future: Interaction dynamics in the workshop 179 Effects of the workshop in the real world 181 Discussion and reflection 183

viii Contents Part III Critical Perspectives 10 Pervasive Normativity and Emerging Technologies 191 Arie Rip Introduction 191 Pervasive normativity as articulated in relevant disciplines 193 Pervasive normativity in emerging technologies and their promises 196 The site of CTA in action 201 Concluding reflections 205 11 Underdetermination and Overconfidence: Constructivism, Design Thinking and the Ethics Politics of Research 213 Alfred Nordmann Introduction 213 Two meanings of design 216 Responsible innovation beyond the laboratory 218 Politics of research 222 Index 227

Figures and Tables Figures 1.1 A Dewey scheme of deliberation for ethicists on the laboratory floor 33 2.1 The basic model 45 2.2 Modify innovation 46 2.3 Modification of normative framework 47 7.1 Daphnia magna 133 10.1 Questions raised by the hype cycle 197 Tables 3.1 Activities that characterise ethics on the laboratory floor 73 ix

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Contributors Simone van der Burg is Senior Researcher and theme leader responsible innovation at IQ healthcare in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research projects are focused on the development of a cooperative and constructive ethics, which enhances ethical reflection among scientists, medical professionals and patients about the technologies that they develop/use. Tsjalling Swierstra is Professor of Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He has published extensively on the mutual shaping of technology and morality, public controversies on emerging technologies and engineering ethics. He chairs the Centre for Ethics and Politics of Emerging Technologies. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent is Professor of Epistemology and History of Science and Technology at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France. She published extensively on the history of French epistemology, the history of chemistry, the philosophy of technoscience and emerging technologies (nanotechnology, synthetic biology), and science-public interactions. Armin Grunwald is Professor and Head of the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis in Karlsruhe, Germany. He studied physics, mathematics and philosophy, and is one of the most influential researchers in Technology Assessment in Germany and Europe. Apart from Technology Assessment, his research themes are ethics of technology, concepts of sustainability and nanotechnology and society. Marianne Boenink is an assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Twente, the Netherlands, where she specializes in philosophy and ethics of biomedical technology. Marianne s research focuses on philosophical and ethical issues related to several biomedical technologies, like predictive DNA diagnostics, breast cancer screening, and applications of nanotechnology in medicine. In addition, she has done methodological work on the early ethical assessment of emerging technologies. xi

xii Notes on Contributors Peter-Paul Verbeek is Professor of Philosophy of Technology at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. His work focuses on conceptualizing and evaluating the relations between humans and technologies. Among his publications are: Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing themorality of Things (2011) and What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design (2005). Xavier Guchet is Associate Professor at the University Paris 1 Panthéon- Sorbonne, France. He has been working for several years on philosophy of technology. He is the author of two books related to the field: Les Sens de l évolution technique (2005) and Technologie et humanisme. Culture, technique et société dans la pensée de Gilbert Simondon (2010). Fern Wickson is a cross-disciplinary scholar currently working as a scientist at GenØk Centre for Biosafety in Tromsø and a Senior Researcher at the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway. Her primary research interests are in ecophilosophy and the environmental governance of emerging technologies. Federica Lucivero is Post-Doctoral Researcher at Tilburg Institute for Law Technology and Society, the Netherlands. She is specialized in the assessment of expectations in research into technology, including molecular diagnostic instruments. Her current research projects focus on ethics and law (trust, privacy, human enhancement) in robotics and ehealth. Lotte Krabbenborg is a post-doctoral researcher at IQ healthcare, the Netherlands. Her background is in humanist studies as well as Science and Technology studies. Her research interests include empirical philosophy, qualitative research, constructive technology assessment, public engagement and innovation studies. Her current work focuses on patient involvement as a method to enhance ethical reflection in genomics research. Arie Rip studied chemistry and philosophy and moved to Science, Technology and Society in the early 1970s. He was Professor of Science Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam (1984-1987) and held the Chair of Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Twente (1987-2006). Recently, he was responsible for a research programme TA and Societal Aspects of Nanotechnology, in the R&D

Notes on Contributors xiii consortium NanoNed. He is also active in studies of scientific institutions and science policy, and advises on such issues. Alfred Nordmann is Professor of Philosophy and History of Science and Technoscience at Darmstadt Technical University, Germany, and is affiliated to the Philosophy Department at the University of South Carolina. He focuses on the one hand on the formation of conceptions of scientific objectivity, on the other hand on epistemological, ontological, aesthetic aspects of technoscientific research. His interests include the philosophy of technoscience, history and philosophy of science and epistemology, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and problems and methods of science and technology assessment.