Jack Stilgoe

Why should we promote public engagement with science

This introductory essay looks back on the two decades since the journal Public Understanding of Science was launched. Drawing on the invited commentaries in this special issue, we can see narratives of continuity and change around the practice and politics of public engagement with science. Public engagement would seem to be a necessary but insufficient part of opening up science and its governance. Those of us who have been involved in advocating, conducting and evaluating public engagement practice could be accused of over-promising. If we, as social scientists, are going to continue a normative commitment to the idea of public engagement, we should therefore develop new lines of argument and analysis. Our support for the idea of public engagement needs qualifying, as part of a broader, more ambitious interest in the idea of publicly engaged science.

Why solar radiation management geoengineering and democracy won’t mix

In this paper we argue that recent policy treatments of solar radiation management (SRM) have insufficiently addressed its potential implications for contemporary political systems. Exploring the emerging ‘social constitution’ of SRM, we outline four reasons why this is likely to pose immense challenges to liberal democratic politics: that the unequal distribution of and uncertainties about SRM impacts will cause conflicts within existing institutions; that SRM will act at the planetary level and necessitate autocratic governance; that the motivations for SRM will always be plural and unstable; and that SRM will become conditioned by economic forces. Keywords: solar radiation management, geoengineering, governance, politics, democracy, social constitution of technology

Responsible innovation across borders: tensions, paradoxes and possibilities

In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from Sao Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.

Mapping the landscape of climate engineering

In the absence of a governance framework for climate engineering technologies such as solar radiation management (SRM), the practices of scientific research and intellectual property acquisition can de facto shape the development of the field. It is therefore important to make visible emerging patterns of research and patenting, which we suggest can effectively be done using bibliometric methods. We explore the challenges in defining the boundary of climate engineering, and set out the research strategy taken in this study. A dataset of 825 scientific publications on climate engineering between 1971 and 2013 was identified, including 193 on SRM; these are analysed in terms of trends, institutions, authors and funders. For our patent dataset, we identified 143 first filings directly or indirectly related to climate engineering technologies—of which 28 were related to SRM technologies—linked to 910 family members. We analyse the main patterns discerned in patent trends, applicants and inventors. We compare our own findings with those of an earlier bibliometric study of climate engineering, and show how our method is consistent with the need for transparency and repeatability, and the need to adjust the method as the field develops. We conclude that bibliometric monitoring techniques can play an important role in the anticipatory governance of climate engineering.

Controlling mobile phone health risks in the UK: a fragile discourse of compliance

This paper describes the scientific/advisory discourse about mobile phone risk that was prevalent in the late 1990s. It argues that advisory responses to public concern constituted a ‘discourse of compliance’, which was strengthened by implicit support from the mobile phone industry. This discourse used compliance with advisory guidelines as the endpoint for discussions with the public. Evidence from non-experts and concerns about the basis of the guidelines were rejected. This discourse acted as a barrier to expert engagement with the public and with the broader context of uncertainties about the safety of mobile phones. The paper explains how this style of scientific advice was exposed as fragile, despite its claims to represent only the best available science, which, it was claimed, was well-understood and consensual. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Public Engagement with Biotechnologies Offers Lessons for the Governance of Geoengineering Research and Beyond

This Perspective looks back on recent experience of public engagement with biotechnologies and asks what can be learned for the governance of another controversial emerging area—geoengineering.

Lancet Commission: Stem cells and regenerative medicine

In this Commission, we argue that a combination of poor quality science, unclear funding models, unrealistic hopes, and unscrupulous private clinics threatens regenerative medicines social licence to operate. If regenerative medicine is to shift from mostly small-scale bespoke experimental interventions into routine clinical practice, substantial rethinking of the social contract that supports such research and clinical practice in the public arena will be required. n nFor decades, stem cell therapy was predominantly limited to bone marrow transplantation for haematological diseases and epidermis transplantation for large burns. Tissue engineering and gene therapy faced huge challenges on their way to clinical translation—a situation that began to change only at the end of the 1990s. The past 10 years have seen an exponential growth in experimental therapies, broadly defined as regenerative medicine, entering the clinical arena. Results vary from unequivocal clinical efficacy for previously incurable and devastating diseases to (more frequently) a modest or null effect. The reasons for these widely different outcomes are starting to emerge. n nAt this stage in their evolution, these experimental therapies (which include, but are not limited to, cell and gene therapy, tissue engineering, and new generation drugs) are necessarily financially expensive. Rigorous and costly clinical-grade procedures have to be followed in the development of medicinal products (involving cells, genetically manipulated cells, viral vectors, or biomaterials with or without cells), often produced in a very limited run. The cost of developing sufficiently high-quality trials means that only wealthier countries are able to fund them. Although public investments in this field are massive internationally, they do not carry guaranteed commercial returns. Compared with conventional drug development, such products follow a highly uncertain route to market. Furthermore, new therapies expose patients to risks, some of which are difficult to predict even with inbuilt safeguards. n nDespite the relatively small number of clinical successes, optimism and excitement about the potential effect or implications of this field remain great. This enthusiasm has led to gaps between peoples expectations that new therapies should be available, often inflated by media reports, and the realities of translating regenerative technologies into clinical practice. The same environment is also permissive of one-off compassionate applications and poorly regulated trials. Indeed, the number of poorly regulated clinics has grown; clinics that appeal to desperate patients and their families, who, in the absence of reliable clinical knowledge from trials, cannot be adequately informed to assess the risks and benefits. n nThese ethical and governance issues pose a challenge to scientists in engaging with the public, the press, and decision-making bodies in different national health systems. Political agendas might not coincide with the public good. In poorly regulated states, the authorisation of a novel therapy might be politically attractive, even when efficacy is unconfirmed, and the cost to taxpayers means other patients are deprived of established and effective therapies. These challenges are difficult to address and solve. We recommend a solution that lies in a coordinated strategy with four pillars: better science, better funding models, better governance, and better public and patient engagement.

Geoengineering as Collective Experimentation

Geoengineering is defined as the ‘deliberate and large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climatic system with the aim of reducing global warming’. The technological proposals for doing this are highly speculative. Research is at an early stage, but there is a strong consensus that technologies would, if realisable, have profound and surprising ramifications. Geoengineering would seem to be an archetype of technology as social experiment, blurring lines that separate research from deployment and scientific knowledge from technological artefacts. Looking into the experimental systems of geoengineering, we can see the negotiation of what is known and unknown. The paper argues that, in renegotiating such systems, we can approach a new mode of governance—collective experimentation. This has important ramifications not just for how we imagine future geoengineering technologies, but also for how we govern geoengineering experiments currently under discussion.

Machine Learning, Social Learning and the Governance of Self-Driving Cars

Self-driving cars, a quintessentially ‘smart’ technology, are not born smart. The algorithms that control their movements are learning as the technology emerges. Self-driving cars represent a high-stakes test of the powers of machine learning, as well as a test case for social learning in technology governance. Society is learning about the technology while the technology learns about society. Understanding and governing the politics of this technology means asking ‘Who is learning, what are they learning and how are they learning?’ Focusing on the successes and failures of social learning around the much-publicized crash of a Tesla Model S in 2016, I argue that trajectories and rhetorics of machine learning in transport pose a substantial governance challenge. ‘Self-driving’ or ‘autonomous’ cars are misnamed. As with other technologies, they are shaped by assumptions about social needs, solvable problems, and economic opportunities. Governing these technologies in the public interest means improving social learning by constructively engaging with the contingencies of machine learning.

Acknowledging AI's dark side.

The 17 July special section on Artificial Intelligence (AI) (p. [248][1]), although replete with solid information and ethical concern, was biased toward optimism about the technology.nnThe articles concentrated on the roles that the military and government play in “advancing” AI, but did not include the opinions of any political scientists or technology policy scholars trained to think about the unintended (and negative) consequences of governmental steering of technology. The interview with Stuart Russell touches on these concerns (“Fears of an AI pioneer,” J. Bohannon, News, p. [252][2]), but as a computer scientist, his solutions focus on improved training. Yet even the best training will not protect against market or military incentives to stay ahead of competitors.nnLikewise double-edged was M. I. Jordan and T. M. Mitchells desire “that society begin now to consider how to maximize” the benefits of AI as a transformative technology (“Machine learning: Trends, perspectives, and prospects,” Reviews, p. [255][3]). Given the grievous shortcomings of national governance and the even weaker capacities of the international system, it is dangerous to invest heavily in AI without political processes in place that allow those who support and oppose the technology to engage in a fair debate.nnThe section implied that we are all engaged in a common endeavor, when in fact AI is dominated by a relative handful of mostly male, mostly white and east Asian, mostly young, mostly affluent, highly educated technoscientists and entrepreneurs and their affluent customers. A majority of humanity is on the outside looking in, and it is past time for those working on AI to be frank about it.nnThe rhetoric was also loaded with positive terms. AI presents a risk of real harm, and any serious analysis of its potential future would do well to unflinchingly acknowledge that fact.nnThe question posed in the collections introduction—“How will we ensure that the rise of the machines is entirely under human control?” (“Rise of the machines,” J. Stajic et al. , p. [248][1])—is the wrong question to ask. There are no institutions adequate to “ensure” it. There are no procedures by which all humans can take part in the decision process. The more important question is this: Should we slow the pace of AI research and applications until a majority of people, representing the worlds diversity, can play a meaningful role in the deliberations? Until that question is part of the debate, there is no debate worth having.nn [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.349.6245.248n [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.349.6245.252n [3]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aaa8415