What do freedom and responsibility mean today, and why do they matter to the scientific community? With expert guests, this ISC podcast series, in partnership with Nature, will explore critical topics such as building trust in science, using emerging technologies responsibly, combatting mis- and dis-information, and the intersections between science and politics.
What do developments in fields like gene editing, machine learning or climate engineering mean for scientific responsibility? In this fifth episode, Professor Françoise Baylis (philosopher and bioethicist at Dalhousie University) and Ocean Mercier (Associate Professor at the School of Māori Studies at Victoria University of Wellington) explore new technologies, the associated risks and benefits they bring in science, considering ethical implications and insights from an indigenous perspective.
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“This science is advancing at a pace that appears to be outstripping our understanding of some of the societal and ethical implications.”
“In indigenous cultures, I think there is a strong association between knowledge and responsibilities, and also being accountable to these relationships that we have.”
Marnie Chesterton
Hello and welcome to this podcast series from the International Science Council, where we’re exploring freedom and responsibility in science.
I’m Marnie Chesterton, and this episode is all about new technologies. What do developments in fields like gene editing, machine learning or climate engineering mean for scientific responsibility? How can we harness their potential while mitigating their potential harms? And can an indigenous perspective help us to think more carefully about the challenges they pose?
Scientific progress has enormously increased our ability to understand the world – but also to change it. And new technologies have the huge potential to impact our planet and the life it contains.
Françoise Baylis
I think there’s an understanding that we have these exciting new possibilities. But I think there’s also, at the same time, a bit of concern of a risk of harm.
Marnie Chesterton
This is Professor Françoise Baylis, a philosopher and bioethicist at Dalhousie University.
Françoise Baylis
These harms can be accidental or inadvertent, or they can be deliberate. And so you can think, for example, about our capacity to make changes to the DNA of a variety of living organisms. But we’re also thinking about the ways in which we might modify the human. And I think people, myself included, are very concerned about what we put under the banner of heritable human genome editing, where we anticipate that changes made to the genome would not just be with that one individual, but ultimately would be passed on to subsequent generations. So I think that’s a really kind of clear example of where you can anticipate and see positive benefits that would support the common good. But you can also imagine the ways in which this very same technology could be used in pursuit of goals or objectives that might be questionable – and even objectionable.
Marnie Chesterton
When it comes to technologies like this, which pose risks as well as benefits, what kind of limits should there be to their use and their development? And who decides what those limits are?
Françoise Baylis
What I think we’re seeing now is enthusiasm for science, in terms of some of the benefits we could all get, concern on the part of the scientific community that it has to have almost, for some, I would say, complete freedom to enquire with the idea that somehow knowledge production is always good. And then I think, from a societal perspective, a real concern to sort of say, look, given that you can anticipate that there might be some harm, we can’t just have this be a free for all. And society does have a place for some kind of regulation. People are deeply committed to the idea of the responsible stewardship of science. And I think one of the things that’s become, really, of central importance is improving our understanding of governance.
Marnie Chesterton
For governance to be effective, Françoise says there are some strategies and mechanisms we should consider.
Françoise Baylis
At some level, we have to think about that at an international level. In an ideal world, what you’re looking for is some kind of global, international agreement on priorities. Self-regulation, I think, is an important element of the responsible stewardship of science. But it can’t be the be-all and end-all. And that’s partly because there’s an inherent kind of conflict of interest, in terms of the willing pursuit of that science, and the ability to properly regulate or constrain that science. So, I think we need to look at a range of other kinds of mechanisms – things like legislation and regulations, court cases and judicial rulings. I think that patents and licensing are a form of regulation. Because if you can’t get a patent, because of the way in which you’ve done the science, that’s a serious limitation. You could also think about the research ethics review guidelines as a form of governance. Just as you could think about the rules for publication. If you can’t get your work published, that’s a real disincentive for doing research in a particular kind of way.
Marnie Chesterton
But we also need to think about the overarching principles that guide how science is done, so that new technologies create benefits that outweigh their harms.
Françoise Baylis
We want a system of science that’s open, transparent, honest, accountable. These are good values that can promote safe science, productive science, and beneficial science. At the same time, I’m a very strong proponent of social justice. Very often harms and benefits do not devolve onto the same people. And so some people benefit, and different people are harmed. And, so, I’m really committed to things like inclusiveness, fairness, non-discrimination, and solidarity. And I think that when you’re looking at the big picture, at new technologies, we need to have our eye on the values and principles that should be driving our science, so that it’s for the benefit of us all.
Marnie Chesterton
Throughout this series, we’ve examined how our attitudes to knowledge and responsibility should shape the way research is done in the 21st century. And although our ideas need to be updated in light of new challenges, we can also gain a lot by drawing on traditional perspectives.
Ocean Mercier
Knowledge is often associated with really key values in indigenous cultures. So in Māori culture, it’s associated with exploration but also with perseverance. And there are responsibilities that come with knowledge.
Marnie Chesterton
This is Ocean Mercier, an Associate Professor at the School of Māori Studies at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
Ocean Mercier
As Māori, we talk about being kaitiaki, or guardians, and we can be guardians of environments or guardians of human charges. But we can also be guardians of knowledge. And, so there are, there’s responsibilities everywhere you look in indigenous societies. And that can really put the brakes on, in terms of us thinking about new technologies, but in a good way, because we’re thinking, okay, well, what are my core values here in relation to this new thing? Or that new thing? Is it going to cause net good in this web of relationships within which I exist, or are there harms that we need to really think quite carefully about.
Marnie Chesterton
In her research, Ocean works on a programme which brings Māori social scientists together with scientists working on gene technologies.
Ocean Mercier
Right now, we’re working on gene silencing or RNA interference to develop a targeted treatment for Varroa mite. Now, Varroa mite is a real hassle for apiarists, for beekeepers. It can destroy whole colonies, hives, or bees. And so our only current method of controlling the Varroa mite, the broad spectrum pesticides that are very damaging to the bees themselves, also. So, with the gene silencing, we are finding some promising results allowing the bees to, you know, just be bees and make honey. So where do we come into it as Māori? Well, first of all Māori have a vested interest in beekeeping as an industry. And I’m not going to claim that Māori did molecular modifications in our traditions. But we do have a tradition of selective breeding for both crops and for things like our pet dogs, the kurī. And so, what can we learn from how our ancestors applied their values to technology, and the way that they applied it, you know, hundreds of years ago? And that’s an important question to ask because those are still relevant values that we live by.
Marnie Chesterton
As well as helping to generate better solutions for problems like Varroa mite, the project has also helped to foster relationships between scientists and Māori communities.
Ocean Mercier
By meeting on a common topic and common ground and a common issue for us both, it allows us to kind of negotiate a space of productivity that strengthens partnerships for further collaborations down the track. Because one of the issues that we face as Māori is a, quite, a poor representation still of Māori within the technical and physical sciences.
Marnie Chesterton
But for Ocean, while traditional knowledge has the potential to be of huge value to science – and to all of us – states have their own responsibilities towards indigenous people, too.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that indigenous peoples maintain control of their knowledge and sciences, and that states recognise and protect the exercise of those rights by indigenous peoples. So, indigenous knowledge undoubtedly will play a huge role in returning our planet back to a state of good equilibrium and proper health. But we need to make sure that the holders of that knowledge are protected, that their rights around their knowledge are protected and that they maintain sovereignty over those.
Marnie Chesterton
That’s it for this episode on freedom and responsibility in science from the International Science Council.
The ISC has released a discussion paper on these issues… You can find the paper and learn more about the ISC’s mission online, at council.science/podcast
In our next and final episode, we’ll be looking at trust in science. What can researchers, publishers and institutions do to combat fraud? And how can we promote public understanding of science?
Disclaimer
The information, opinions and recommendations presented by our guests are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the values and beliefs of the International Science Council.
Image by Drew Farwell on Unsplash.
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