Roger Strand

University of Bergen | UiB · Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities

Could there be a Taoist philosophy of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML)? This chapter discusses why a molecular treatment of AML has been so hard to find but still so intensely researched, and exposes some of the ethical dilemmas involved when treating this aggressive blood cancer. It does so by applying the concepts and style of the ancient Chinese ma...

Rising health care costs is a challenge for all health care systems, and new and expensive cancer drugs is an important contributor to this. Many countries – like Norway – have therefore established priority setting institutions and systems for drug appraisals where equal treatment, neutrality and transparency are key values. Despite this, controve...

Background As the range of therapeutic options in the field of oncology increases, so too does the strain on health care budgets. The imbalance between what is medically possible and financially feasible is frequently rendered as an issue of tragic choices, giving rise to public controversies around health care rationing. Main body We analyse the...

Salmon aquaculture is a growing industry with increasing challenges of feed sustainability and availability. This global sustainability issue has led to calls for novel feeds. Aquafly, a Norwegian research project, has performed small-scale tests using the black soldier fly as an ingredient in salmon diet. However, in order for insect feeds to beco...

https://issues.org/issue/37-4/

Background In precision medicine biomarkers stratify patients into groups that are offered different treatments, but this may conflict with the principle of equal treatment. While some patient characteristics are seen as relevant for unequal treatment and others not, it is known that they all may influence treatment decisions. How biomarkers influe...

Economic growth is closely linked to increases in production, consumption and resource use and has detrimental effects on the natural environment and human health. It is unlikely that a long-lasting, absolute decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures and impacts can be achieved at the global scale; therefore, societies need to reth...

The problem of developing research and innovation in accordance with society’s general needs and values has received increasing attention in research policy. In the last 7 years, the concept of “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) has gained prominence in this regard, along with the resulting question of how best to integrate awareness about...

Norway is a small country that remains outside the European Union while in many ways acting as if it were within it. It may be useful to study its smaller and more peripheral countries. At the periphery, more is possible: the solutions may be a bit more exotic, a bit easier to analyse in terms of their historically contingencies, and perhaps even a...

In recent years the concept of the circular economy gained prominence in EU policy-making. The circular economy promotes a future in which linear ‘make-use-dispose’ cultures are replaced by more circular models. In this paper, we use the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to ask how an imaginary of circularity has been assembled and stabilised,...

The Circular Economy in Europe presents an overview and a critical discussion on how circularity is conceived, imagined, and enacted in current EU policy-making. In 2013, the idea of a circular economy entered the stage of European policy-making in the efforts to reconcile environmental and economic policy objectives. In 2019 the European Commissio...

The steady increase in production volume of salmon aquaculture has sharpened concerns about its sustainability. In particular the production of salmon feed is a reason for concern given its reliance on scarce natural resources, such as wild fish captures. Multi-scale integrated analysis is put forward as a tool to anticipate the environmental and s...

Introduction/Background Little is known about the relationship between tumor reductive surgery and quality of life in patients diagnosed with epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). It is therefore unclear whether it is the surgery or the disease itself that is the main factor affecting the patients’ quality of life. Engaging the user perspective ensures...

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus in both academia and policy. This concept draws attention to the link between different environmental and societal domains, and potentially entails substantive shifts in governance processes. As a consequence, policy-makers and scientists have started to develop met...

This paper examines some of the tensions between the ideals and the operationalisation of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). It does so through reflections on research into integrating assessments of various kinds in the context of complex, emerging technologies. Its aim is to address some aspects of what actually happens, as new collaborat...

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 scientis...

There are important lessons to be learned for research policy from the history, philosophy and sociology of science. Current European research policies make a number of assumptions about the role of scientific research and innovation in our economies and societies. They also make assumptions about the governability of scientific research by public...

Sociotechnical imaginaries are visions of desired social and technological futures created and sustained by stakeholders in science, industry and politics. Within the dominating innovation narratives there are a number of implicit and explicit beliefs that are both descriptive and normative. Technological optimism is the prevailing discourse, chall...

The governance of emerging science and technologies is becoming an important policy issue. We elucidate the meanings of emerging science and technologies from a multidisciplinary perspective, and we discuss the ethical and political consequences of their introduction in the context of the European Union. We illustrate the relation between science t...

Cuando se exige la “nanoética”, ¿qué exactamente es lo que hacefalta?Varios informes de diversos paises (véase: nsf, 2001; nfr, 2005; re/rae, 2004; rna, 2004; unesco, 2006; naf, 2006) ya recomendaron desdehace años que el desarrollo nanotecnológico siguiera en paralelo al de lascompetencias Оticas. Uno de los puntos comunes de dichos informes esque...

The aim of the Epinet case study was to explore and interact with the epistemic communities / networks that have been developing, implementing, supporting and promoting IVM technologies. The study team consisted of expertise in sociotechnical evaluations, systems and uncertainty analysis, ethics and media studies. The team identified early on a sma...

Indicators for promoting and monitoring responsible research and innovation Report from the Expert Group on policy indicators for responsible research and innovation This report of the Expert Group on Policy Indicators for Responsible Research and Innovation, considers options for RRI indicators. It divides such indicators into three sections: i)...

The tensions between Cartesian dreams of certainty and method, on the one hand, and the messy realities of human life, on the other, are particularly salient in the medical universe. The indubitable progress of scientific medicine coincides with a rise in unresolved individual and societal health problems of ever-growing complexity, challenging the...

Researchers have iterated that the future of synthetic biology and biotechnology lies in novel consumer applications of crossing biology with engineering. However, if the new biology’s future is to be sustainable, early and serious efforts must be made towards social sustainability. Therefore, the crux of new applications of synthetic biology and b...

In research and teaching on ethical aspects of emerging sciences and technologies, the structure of working environments, spaces and relationships play a significant role. Many of the routines and standard practices of academic life, however, do little to actively explore and experiment with these elements. They do even less to address the importan...

This article is concerned with how the development of mixed methods research is influenced by the many aspects of human interplay occurring between researchers representing different disciplines. It examines findings from interviews, field notes, and written documentation from a case study involving a team of health science researchers doing mixed...

Science and technology evolve fast both as a result of their internal dynamics and the increased emphasis on research and innovation in the so-called knowledge economy. Due attention to ethical issues and aspects of emerging science and technology is called for. This paper presents the development of an experimental methodology for empirical and pa...

In science and innovation policies, conceptions of the future enter on multiple levels. This paper is concerned with the implicit conception of the future that appears to be built into the very frame of contemporary science and innovation policies in the knowledge society. Marquis de Condorcet's Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of th...

In the Amacayacu National Park in Colombia, which partially overlaps with Indigenous territories, several elements of an inclusive protected area management model have been implemented since the 1990s. In particular, a dialogue between scientific researchers, indigenous people and park staff has been promoted for the co-production of biological and...

In a speech before the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, Gro Harlem Brundtland, the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy on Climate Change, said: So what is it that is new today? What is new is that doubt has been eliminated. The report of the International Panel on Climate Change is clear. And so is the Stern report. It is irresponsible, r...

With the development of large-scale health registries and human biobanks to be used as research infrastructures, bioethicists, lawyers, philosophers, and social scientists have worked intensely to cast light on current challenges to the principle of informed consent.

Risk and responsibility have always been linked philosophically in the Western tradition. The purpose of this article is to discuss possible alternatives to the centrality of the risk discourse, arguing that such alternatives call for a revision in the concept of responsibility, decoupling it from the aspirations of control over Nature and the futu...

Researchers should be made co-responsible for the wider consequences of their research focus and the application of their findings. This paper describes a meta-reflection procedure that can be used as a tool to enhance scientific responsibility and reflective practice. The point of departure is that scientific practice is situated in power relation...

Introduction: Historical Background Identifying and Avoiding Unethical Nanotechnological ProductsEnsuring Ethical Nanotechnological Research, Innovation, and ProductionNano-Ethics as the Question of the Good Nanotechnology SocietyConclusion: The Ethical Challenge Ahead for the Nano-Agri-Food SectorAcknowledgmentsReferences

There is currently a strong focus on responsible research in relation to the development of nanoscience and nanotechnology. This study presents a series of conversations with nanoresearchers, with the 'European Commission recommendation on a code of conduct for responsible nanosciences and nanotechnologies research' (EC-CoC) as its point of departu...

This paper addresses the dynamics of real processes of inclusive environmental governance by looking at the decision-maker/expert/lay person interplay. Specifically, we present a comparative ethnographic study that leads to a critical examination of Marteen Hajer’s concept of technological citizenship and its role in normative models of so-called i...

Xenotransplantation is becoming an independent political and regulatory issue. Most national regulations and international recommendations prescribe a precautionary approach, including strict monitoring and surveillance of patients. This is due to the risk of xenosis, a disease induced by non-human biological material. The paper shows how the preca...

The current thrust toward greater integration and harmonization of transnational biobank regulations is analyzed with analogical reference to the Tower of Babel account in The Book of Genesis. Raising the question whether biobank regulations should be harmonized, we distinguish between three types of research biobanks: local, regional, and internat...

From the new imperialism of the second half of the nineteenth century to the biocolonialism at the beginning of the twentieth century, expansionist policies went from annexing land to annexing life. Arguing that the panacea of human ailments professed to be achievable by unlimited expansion into the molecular space of human life comes with a yet un...

Nanoscale objects are presented by ever more sophisticated pictures (nano images). There is a need to reflect on the status of such nano images, because the "seeing" involved is of a highly indirect kind. The aim of this paper is to complement existing philosophical critique of nano images with a scientific practitioner's perspective. First, we sho...

This chapter addresses one so-called ethical aspect of biobanking, namely the relationship between biobanks for research and donors of human biological samples and personal health information. Central to bioethical theory and practice is the institution of informed consent and its potential to create trust. We present results from an observational...

Trenger vi en nanoetikk? Spørsmålet undersøkes ofte gjennom analyser av hva som er spesifikt nytt med nanoteknologi som skulle rettferdiggjøre etableringen av et eget nanoetikkfelt. Artikkelen knytter ikke det nye til teknologiens produkter som sådan, men til det at nanoteknologien oppstår som et nytt og ekspansivt satsningsfelt i en tid med enighe...

The development of converging technologies (CTs) closely interacting with the human body might become one of the great challenges for science and technology governance in the years to come. This paper compares the visions and recommendations on CT policies by Roco and Bainbridge with those of the high-level expert group in the EU (authored by Nordm...

Este artículo analiza el papel de la ciencia en el desarrollo e implementación de políticas. Particularmente se presentan y discuten varios modelos conceptuales (principalmente el modelo moderno) que describen la relación e interfaces entre la ciencia y las políticas de regulación de asuntos medioambientales. A su vez, teniendo en cuenta que estos...

This paper presents an interview study among scientists working with Decode genetics in Iceland and lay individuals having recently donated blood to Decode. While genuinely enthusiastic that genetic technologies hold great potential to avert disease, the informants shared concerns that extensive predictive genetic testing, preventive treatment and...

Concepts taken from complex systems theory, such as ‘agents’ and ‘attractors’, have been proposed as metaphors in medical practice.This proposal is assessed by a comparison of the notions of complex adaptive systems (CAS) and human complexity. CAS are characterized by the emergence of sophisticated output features of rule-governed non-linear system...

High levels of toxic chemicals such as tributyltin (TBT) have been found in the bottom sediments of many Norwegian harbours. Norwegian environmental authorities consider maintenance dredging of such harbours to be potentially harmful to the environment due to the suspension and spread of polluted sediments during the dredging operation. Accordingly...

Complexity scientists often express the need for the development of a theory of complexity. One of the major problems on the way toward such a theory is the lack of a generally agreed on definition of complexity, In this article it is proposed that, whatever definition one might one day agree on, contextuality and radical openness are essential fea...

Controversy abounds in the governance of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for use in agriculture, partly due to ideological differences. Technological optimism and the "shallow" and the "deep" ecology movements are three influential ideologies that are seen to differ both on value commitments and factual beliefs with respect to GMOs. Factual m...

The rate of production of medical knowledge is high and increasing, and medical practitioners find it hard to keep up. Still, production of new knowledge is normally considered to be unambiguously desirable. This paper is a philosophical reflection upon this assumption of desirability. It is noted that the health sector appears to be subject to the...

Exploration of healthy patients' risk factors for disease has become a major medical activity. The rationale behind primary prevention through exploration and therapeutic risk reduction is not separated from the theoretical assumption that every form of uncertainty can be expressed as risk. Distinguishing "risk" (as quantitative probabilities in a...

In the 20th century, molecular life sciences have become a major arena of scientific and technological innovation. The rate of progress, especially within gene technology, clearly indicates that molecular life sciences will give rise to new (technological) opportunities and (environmental and human) problems in the future.The main claim of this pap...

Scientific development influences philosophical thought, and vice versa. If philosophy is to be of any use to the production, evaluation or application of biochemical knowledge, biochemistry will have to explicate its needs. This paper concentrates on the need for a philosophical analysis of methodological challenges in biochemistry, above all the...