Niels Mejlgaard

The 2010 Eurobarometer on the life sciences

Since 1991, the triennial Eurobarometer survey has assessed public attitudes about biotech and the life sciences in Europe. The latest 2010 Eurobarometer survey on the Life Sciences and Biotechnology (http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/europeans-biotechnology-in-2010_en.pdf), based on representative samples from 32 European countries, hints at a new era in the relations between science and society. We see less criticism of technology based on distrust in government and industry; more enthusiasm for novel technologies; and a more sophisticated appraisal of what technologies offer in terms of benefits, safety and sustainability. Europeans want regulation in the public interest and want a voice in such regulation when social values are at stake; we highlight an emerging European landscape of social value differences that shape peoples views of technologies.

Europeans and Biotechnology in 2010: Winds of change?

George Gaskell and colleagues designed, analysed and interpreted the Eurobarometer 73.1 on the Life Sciences and Biotechnology as part of the research project Sensitive Technologies and European Public Ethics (STEPE), funded by the Science in Society Programme of the EC’s Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7).

Participation and competence as joint components in a cross-national analysis of scientific citizenship

Recent years have witnessed a ‘democratic turn’ towards active citizen participation in science and technology. The emerging participatory approach has been framed as a critique of a reductionist, outdated ‘deficit model’ of citizen competence, literacy or understanding. Participatory modes of citizen involvement with science are presented as competing rather than complementary in offering a strategy for making science and technology accountable and open to society. We use latent class models to develop cross-national measures of competence and participation, and explore the relation between the two. We argue that the question of how to analyze and assess the role of citizens in knowledge societies should not be an either/or — participation or competence — but a matter of understanding the balance and interconnected-ness of both. We suggest that the idea of a ‘scientific citizenship’ could be a useful integrative notion to bridge the divide between concerns about public participation and public competence.

Developing a methodology to assess the impact of research grant funding: A mixed methods approach

This paper discusses the development of a mixed methods approach to analyse research funding. Research policy has taken on an increasingly prominent role in the broader political scene, where research is seen as a critical factor in maintaining and improving growth, welfare and international competitiveness. This has motivated growing emphasis on the impacts of science funding, and how funding can best be designed to promote socio-economic progress. Meeting these demands for impact assessment involves a number of complex issues that are difficult to fully address in a single study or in the design of a single methodology. However, they point to some general principles that can be explored in methodological design. We draw on a recent evaluation of the impacts of research grant funding, discussing both key issues in developing a methodology for the analysis and subsequent results. The case of research grant funding, involving a complex mix of direct and intermediate effects that contribute to the overall impact of funding on research performance, illustrates the value of a mixed methods approach to provide a more robust and complete analysis of policy impacts. Reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology are used to examine refinements for future work.

The trajectory of scientific citizenship in Denmark: Changing balances between public competence and public participation

The understanding of relations between science and the public is divided between two competing paradigms: one that focuses on citizen competence and one-way dissemination of knowledge, and another that emphasizes public participation and dialogue. This article proposes an integrative framework that regards competence and participation as important dimensions of ‘scientific citizenship’, and focuses on the changing balance between these dimensions. Recounting developments in Denmark, it is argued that the trajectory of scientific citizenship in Denmark runs counter to the broader European trend. In the 2000s, Danish policies and social practices concerned with the interplay between science and the public have been highly focused on one-way dissemination, and the traditional ‘Danish model’ of institutionalized, deliberative public participation in science and technology decision-making, which developed in the course of the 1980s and received international renown, has lost much of its influence. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Motivational factors, gender and engineering education

Based on survey data covering the full population of students enrolled in Danish engineering education in autumn 2010, we explore the motivational factors behind educational choice, with a particular aim of comparing male and female students1 reasons for choosing a career in engineering. We find that women are significantly more influenced by mentors than men, while men tend to be more motivated by intrinsic and financial factors, and by the social importance of the engineering profession. Parental influence is low across all programmes and by differentiating between specific clusters of engineering programmes, we further show that these overall gender differences are subtle and that motivational factors are unequally important across the different educational programmes. The findings from this study clearly indicate that intrinsic and social motivations are the most important motivational factors; however, gender and programme differentiation needs to be taken into account, and points towards diverse future strategies for attracting students to engineering education.

Contextualizing Nanotechnology Education: Fostering a Hybrid Imagination in Aalborg, Denmark

In the context of worldwide economic and environmental crisis it is increasingly important that nanotechnology, genomics, media engineering and other fields of ‘technoscience’ with immense societal relevance are taught in ways that promote social responsibility and that educational activities are organized so that science and engineering students will be able to integrate the ‘contextual knowledge’ they learn into their professional, technical–scientific identities and forms of competence. Since the 1970s, teaching programmes in science, technology and society for science and engineering have faded away at many universities and have been replaced by courses in economic and commercial aspects, or entrepreneurship and/or ethical and philosophical issues. By recounting our recent efforts in contextualizing nanotechnology education at Aalborg University in Denmark, we consider a socio-cultural approach to contextual learning, one that is meant to contribute to a greater sense of social responsibility on the part of scientists and engineers. It is our contention that the social, political and environmental challenges facing science and engineering in the world today require the fostering of what we have come to call a ‘hybrid imagination’, mixing scientific–technical skills with a sense of social responsibility or global citizenship, if science and engineering are to help solve social problems rather than create new ones. Three exemplary cases of student project work are discussed: one on raspberry solar cells, which connected nanotechnology to the global warming debate, and two in which surveys on the public understanding of nanotechnology were combined with a scientific–technical project.

Performed and preferred participation in science and technology across Europe: Exploring an alternative idea of “democratic deficit”:

Republican ideals of active scientific citizenship and extensive use of deliberative, democratic decision making have come to dominate the public participation agenda, and academic analyses have focused on the deficit of public involvement vis-à-vis these normative ideals. In this paper we use latent class models to explore what Eurobarometer survey data can tell us about the ways in which people participate in tacit or in policy-active ways with developments in science and technology, but instead of focusing on the distance between observed participation and the dominant, normative ideal of participation, we examine the distance between what people do, and what they themselves think is appropriate in terms of involvement. The typology of citizens emerging from the analyses entails an entirely different diagnosis of democratic deficit, one that stresses imbalance between performed and preferred participation.

Science’s disparate responsibilities: Patterns across European countries

It is a distinctive feature of European science policy that science is expected to meet economic and broader societal objectives simultaneously. Science should be governed democratically and take significant responsibilities towards the economy, the political system and civil society, but the coherency of these multiple claims is underexplored. Using metrics that emerge from both quantitative and qualitative studies, we examine the interrelatedness of different responsibilities at the level of countries. A total of 33 European Union member states and associated countries are included in the analysis. We find no trade-off between economic and broader societal contributions. Europe is, however, characterised by major divisions in terms of the location of science in society. There is a significant East–West divide, and Europe appears to be far from accomplishing an integrated European Research Area.

Teaching Responsible Research and Innovation: A Phronetic Perspective

Across the European research area and beyond, efforts are being mobilized to align research and innovation processes and products with societal values and needs, and to create mechanisms for inclusive priority setting and knowledge production. A central concern is how to foster a culture of “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) among scientists and engineers. This paper focuses on RRI teaching at higher education institutions. On the basis of interviews and reviews of academic and policy documents, it highlights the generic aspects of teaching aimed at invoking a sense of care and societal obligation, and provides a set of exemplary cases of RRI-related teaching. It argues that the Aristotelian concept of phronesis can capture core properties of the objectives of RRI-related teaching activities. Teaching should nurture the students’ capacity in terms of practical wisdom, practical ethics, or administrative ability in order to enable them to act virtuously and responsibly in contexts which are often characterized by uncertainty, contention, and controversy.