Team:Edinburgh/Practices

What is the purpose of science? Progress? Understanding?

If we are to consider that science is there to help us deepen our understanding of the world around us and has its ends rooted in the progress of society, then should society hold a say in the direction which science takes?

It is our understanding that this is the role that Human Practices plays in Synthetic Biology. It helps determine its direction so that it is of most benefit to society which will, in turn, be most beneficial to science. Thus it is not a paternal relationship we should have with society but rather an equal and reciprocal one. It is important to note that when the consequences of misguided endeavours have such tremendous potential for disaster as they do in Synthetic Biology then it is imperative that this interaction between science and society is given due attention.

It is to this end that we have developed our approach to the human practice element of our project. We aim to investigate the disparities in thought between the science community and the wider 'publics' to understand whether we are all working towards a similar end-goal and if not, then why?

As a means of giving our investigation a framework we have broken it down into three large over-arching questions, namely Visions [where are we going as a ‘world’? What is our future?], Practices [how do you think we can get there i.e. what institiutions/ legislation/ developments need to be put in place for us to reach this ‘vision’?] and Feelings [how do you feel about this? And why do you feel that way?]. These questions are vague and ambiguous but attempt to discover disparities between people’s conceptions of the world, provoke creative thought about the way in which society might progress and elicit deeper feelings of hope or anxiety about the future. We will attempt to deepen our understanding of these questions through a number of different methods.

Firstly we will develop and deploy a number of cultural probes. These will be given to a wide range of different audiences and will contain several tasks that will be related to each area of interest.

"[Cultural] Probes are collections of evocative tasks meant to elicit inspirational responses from people—not comprehensive information about them, but fragmentary clues about their lives and thoughts." (["W. W. Gaver et al, Cultural Probes and the Value of Uncertainty, 2004"])

Secondly we will attempt to make contact with and interview a number of different people from expert fields. Initial ideas have focused around people who have involvement in Academics, Industry, Policy Making, Visionaries. These people may also be targets for the cultural probe. This might also involve meeting with an MSP (if we are able!) and attempting to open a discourse of and related to the field of Synthetic Biology in Scotland.

Thirdly, hasn't been thought about yet!

Notes

Some notes that were sent to us...

Human Practices 2011

Attached is a a variation on some powerpoint slides that Jane and I used last year to introduce Human Practices to the UK iGEM teams. Hopefully they're not too cryptic, but just ask if you have any questions or want to know more about anything.

Human Practices ideas brainstormed -- Tues 5 July. PLEASE ADD MORE!!

• exploring / developing ideas of biorefineries based on the project application area of converting sugars / starches
• contacting industry (e.g. who makes xylitol? compare companies that do and don't use microbial biosynthesis?)
• work with Management & Business students at UofE (Chris F has a contact there)
• develop a cultural probe -- for the general public? for industry?
• a speculative magazine (perhaps could be used as a probe or provocation?)
• defining key words on the wiki in simple English (get the team to work on consensus definitions? or maybe provide definitions grounded in different disciplines? e.g. what does the word 'model' mean?)
• something building on the work with the digital pen & notepad that Linda has you using. A reflection on whether / how it has been helpful at all for the team? Any possibility of collaborating with the Beijing team?
• an animation?
• sessions with the Forum's playwright-in-residence? ('tea with Peter' sessions on the last Thursday of every month at the Traverse Theatre, see http://www.genomicsnetwork.ac.uk/forum/events/pastevents/publicevents/title,24851,en.html)

[** Whatever you do, it's important to find a clear way of representing your work on the wiki, and providing a rationale for why you've done this work and what you've learned!! **]

USEFUL REFERENCES? (Just let me know if you have any difficulty finding any of these. Also which ones are useful / not useful so that I can tailor subsequent postings!)

Bioeconomy and biorefineries (I also have some readings on sustainability if you're interested)

European Commission (2005) Conference report: New perspectives on the knowledge-based bio-economy; available at http://ec.europa.eu/research//conferences/2005/kbb/pdf/kbbe_conferencereport.pdf

OECD. The Bioeconomy to 2030: designing a policy agenda. OECD International Futures Programme Scoping Document, Paris, 2006; available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/48/1/36887128.pdf

Herrera, S (2004) Industrial biotechnology—a chance at redemption. Nature Biotechnology 22, 671-675 [**this paper has an image of what an 'idealized biorefinery' would look like]

ETC Group (2008) Commodifying nature's last straw? Extreme genetic engineering and the post-petroleum sugar economy; http://www.etcgroup.org/upload/publication/703/02/sugareconomyweboct10-2008.pdf [** the ETC group have very provocative illustrations, and it's important to know what kinds of concerns they're raising and think about how you might respond. Synthetic biology is one of their main areas of work (http://www.etcgroup.org/en/issues/synthetic_biology), and in fact they've recently complained to the organisers of SB5.0 that they weren't given any opportunity at the conference to engage with the research community]

Kamm, B & Kamm, M (2004) Principles of biorefineries. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 64: 137–145

Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology (2001) Harvest on the Horizon: Future Uses of Agricultural Biotechnology

Young, A. L. (2004) Biotechnology for food, energy, and industrial products: New opportunities for bio-based products. Environ. Sci. & Pollut. Res. 10, 273–276 (2003).

EuropaBio is a good organization to know about, and they have developed pretty comprehensive diagrams of how biorefineries might compare to traditional petrochemical refineries; http://www.europabio.org/

Castle, D., Loeppky, R. & Saner, M. (2006) Convergence in biotechnology innovation: Case studies and implications for regulation, University of Quelph, Canada; available at http://davidcastle.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Castle-et-al-2006-Convergence-in-Biotechnology-Innovation.pdf [**David Castle is now a professor at Innogen in Edinburgh, and i'm sure he'd be willing to talk with you about your work]

Eames, M., Mcdowall, W., Hodson, M. & Marvin, S. (2006) Negotiating contested visions and place-specific expectations of the hydrogen economy. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 18(3), 361–374. [** this article is about the hydrogen economy, but interesting to think about whether the same underlying visions apply to the bioeconomy and models for biorefineries?]

Hilgartner, S. (2007) Making the bioeconomy measurable: politics of an emerging anticipatory machinery. BioSocieties 2(3), 382–386. [** this piece offers a short critique of the work that the OECD is doing on the bioeconomy. Are economic measures the only and best way to evaluate the bioeconomy? What other goals and values might be important?]