Peter Danielson

Survey of Canadian Animal-Based Researchers' Views on the Three Rs: Replacement, Reduction and Refinement

The ‘Three Rs’ tenet (replacement, reduction, refinement) is a widely accepted cornerstone of Canadian and international policies on animal-based science. The Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC) initiated this web-based survey to obtain greater understanding of ‘principal investigators’ and ‘other researchers’ (i.e. graduate students, post-doctoral researchers etc.) views on the Three Rs, and to identify obstacles and opportunities for continued implementation of the Three Rs in Canada. Responses from 414 participants indicate that researchers currently do not view the goal of replacement as achievable. Researchers prefer to use enough animals to ensure quality data is obtained rather than using the minimum and potentially waste those animals if a problem occurs during the study. Many feel that they already reduce animal numbers as much as possible and have concerns that further reduction may compromise research. Most participants were ambivalent about re-use, but expressed concern that the practice could compromise experimental outcomes. In considering refinement, many researchers feel there are situations where animals should not receive pain relieving drugs because it may compromise scientific outcomes, although there was strong support for the Three Rs strategy of conducting animal welfare-related pilot studies, which were viewed as useful for both animal welfare and experimental design. Participants were not opposed to being offered “assistance” to implement the Three Rs, so long as the input is provided in a collegial manner, and from individuals who are perceived as experts. It may be useful for animal use policymakers to consider what steps are needed to make replacement a more feasible goal. In addition, initiatives that offer researchers greater practical and logistical support with Three Rs implementation may be useful. Encouragement and financial support for Three Rs initiatives may result in valuable contributions to Three Rs knowledge and improve welfare for animals used in science.

Survey-Based Discussions on Morally Contentious Applications of Interactive Robotics

Introduction: As applications of robotics extend to areas that directly impact human life, such as the military and eldercare, the deployment of autonomous and semi-autonomous robots increasingly requires the input of stakeholder opinions. Up to now, technological deployment has been relying on the guidance of government/military policy and the healthcare system without specific incorporation of professional and lay opinion. Methods: This paper presents results from a roboethics study that uses the unique N-Reasons scenario-based survey instrument. The instrument collected Yes, No, Neutral responses from more than 250 expert and lay responders via the Internet along with their ethics-content reasons for the answers, allowing the respondents to agree to previously-provided reasons or to write their own. Data from three questions relating to military and eldercare robots are analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Results: The survey reveals that respondents weigh the appropriateness of robotics technology deployment in concert with the level of autonomy conferred upon it. The accepted level of robot autonomy does not appear to be solely dependent on the perceived efficiency and effectiveness of the technology, but is subject to the robot’s relationship with the public’s principle-based reasons and the application field in focus. Conclusion: The N-Reasons instrument was effective in eliciting ethical commentary in a simple, on-line survey format and provides insights into the interactions between the issues that respondents consider across application and technology boundaries.

Designing a machine to learn about the ethics of robotics: the N-reasons platform

We can learn about human ethics from machines. We discuss the design of a working machine for making ethical decisions, the N-Reasons platform, applied to the ethics of robots. This N-Reasons platform builds on web based surveys and experiments, to enable participants to make better ethical decisions. Their decisions are better than our existing surveys in three ways. First, they are social decisions supported by reasons. Second, these results are based on weaker premises, as no exogenous expertise (aside from that provided by the participants) is needed to seed the survey. Third, N-Reasons is designed to support experiments so we can learn how to improve the platform. We sketch experimental results that show the platform is a success as well as pointing to ways it can be improved.

Analysis of an innovative survey platform: comparison of the public's responses to human health and salmon genomics surveys

This paper presents the results of the first two surveys conducted using the innovative NERD (Norms Evolving in Response to Dilemmas) platform. The structure, results, and analysis of the first two NERD surveys on genomics and human health and salmon genomics are compared. This comparison demonstrates that NERD is a cost-effective and efficient public consultation and experimental tool that has provided insight on public acceptance of new technologies such as genomics.

Ethics, evolution and culture.

Recent work in the fields of evolutionary ethics and moral psychology appears to be converging on a single empirically- and evolutionary-based science of morality or ethics. To date, however, these fields have failed to provide an adequate conceptualisation of how culture affects the content and distribution of moral norms. This is particularly important for a large class of moral norms relating to rapidly changing technological or social environments, such as norms regarding the acceptability of genetically modified organisms. Here we suggest that a science of morality/ethics can benefit from adopting a cultural evolution or gene-culture coevolution approach, which treats culture as a second, separate evolutionary system that acts in parallel to biological/genetic evolution. This cultural evolution approach brings with it a set of established theoretical concepts (e.g. different cultural transmission mechanisms) and empirical methods (e.g. evolutionary game theory) that can significantly improve our understanding of human morality.

Video surveillance for the rest of us: proliferation, privacy, and ethics education

The ethics of video surveillance has focused on policy and professional issues. But more individuals will use and encounter remote video surveillance technology as these devices become cheaper and easier to use. We propose an educational approach to the ethics of the emerging practice of non-professional remote video surveillance. Extending the approach to ethics and technology used in our Robot Ethics Lab, we first sketch an abstract model to explain some of the value issues surveillance technology generates. Second, using widely available robotic toys and networking software, we show how working within a technologically and ethically rich environment can move us from a crude remote surveillance prototype towards a more acceptable social contract covering this technology.

A Collaborative Platform for Experiments in Ethics and Technology

This chapter describes the NERD platform: a web-based research instrument designed to support collaborative experimental research in the ethics of technology. Starting with our research group’s goal to study democratic ethics, we sketch the resulting problems of public participation: the need to reconcile cheap large-scale methods with deep ethical engagement. We argue that our combination of scenario-based surveys and experiments can provide both ethically and experimentally significant data; results from our recent survey experiments support our claims, showing how large numbers of participants evaluate technologies ranging from genetic testing to genetically modified fish and pigs. While the initial use has been focused on the ethics of biotechnology, our approach unifies diverse ethical approaches, from bioethics to environmental ethics and is designed to generalize to any controversial issue with significant technical content. We discuss two aspects of the project of interest to engineers and philosophers: our platform is designed to stress test ethical decision making and some assumptions that social science and philosophy bring to applied ethics.

Case Study: An Assistive Technology Ethics Survey

This chapter describes the online N-Reasons Ethics and Assistive Technology survey designed to address key ethical issues in assistive technologies. The survey was used to foster deliberation and focus discussions in a multidisciplinary workshop on assistive technologies. The survey focused on each of the four workshop topics (evaluation, sensing, networking, and mobility). This chapter thus begins with an overview of the survey design in Sect. 9.1 followed by the process that was used to establish survey content in Sect. 9.2. The results for the survey are presented in Sect. 9.3 followed by brief conclusions in Sect. 9.4.

NERD and Norms : Framework and Experiments

We advocate and share the same theoretical framework for empirical research in ethics as exemplified in Christina Bicchieri’s The Grammar of Society. Our research differs from Bicchieri’s in our approach to experimentation: where she relies on lab experiments, we have constructed an experimental platform based on an internet survey instrument; where she relies on rational reconstructions, we do not. In this paper we focus on four contrasts in our methods: (1) we provide a space to explore ethical influence and norm transmission between participants, belief and choice revision, and reputation over time; (2) we provide ways for participants to expand the context of their and others’ decisions; (3) we focus on more realistic ethical decisions than is allowed by games; and (4) we explain why Bicchieri’s method of rational reconstructions presents challenges to her theory of social norms. Our methods are complementary to Bicchieri’s, and together we can work toward developing more comprehensive empirically informed ethics.

Robots for the rest of us or the ’best‘ of us?

A long time ago, struck with the novelty and philosophical potential of W. Ross Ashby (1960, 1964)’s cybernetic research program, I set out to build myself a light seeking ‘turtle’. I bought the most sophisticated construction toy I could find (in Canada): a complete Number 10 MeccanoTM set plus Mechanisms and Electronics add-ons. With the help of some friendly engineering students (from my logic class) I built my own “electric eye” and got a kluged but working robot to track a light source. While it begged to be paired with another, to see what communication and feedback would lead to, replication in the crude medium of the day was far too expensive, and the project died. Almost thirty years later, my 13 year old daughter Jody, who has never programmed anything (to her parent’s dismay) closeted herself with my new MINDSTORMSTM1 Robotics Invention System and taught herself to program two robots in a day and a half. What she ended up with was technically far superior to, and more interesting than, my brainchild. Hers, unlike mine, gave the cat and the dog, as well as every recent visitor to our home and my office, something to think about. She went off to work on improvements, while my 9 year old daughter Lisa lobbied for another set, so that she could learn to build a robot (without destroying her sister’s work) and try to get two robots to communicate. Lisa got the second set and promptly imagined a type of robot perhaps new to the literature of agency, if not to science fiction. We’ve gone on to build this robot with one brain and two bodies. I relate this story, not merely to contextualize this review, but also to indicate the progress its subject, a robot construction kit, represent for experimenting