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Coming to grips with scientific ignorance in the governance of endocrine disrupting chemicals and nanoparticles
... And without risk, it is not possible for science to establish the kind of causation needed for regulatory purposes (Vogel, 2004). As the hazard concept is not fully applicable to EDCs, a shift toward acceptance of concern as a substitute (risk = concern × exposure) will enable the calculation of risk (Honkela et al., 2014). The notion of concern-based risk assessment could function as a pragmatic industry policy for working with materials with persistent uncertainties and likely risks. ...
... The notion of concern-based risk assessment could function as a pragmatic industry policy for working with materials with persistent uncertainties and likely risks. This will also operationalize precautionary processes, where cost considerations tend to overrule issues of precaution when quantitative estimates of data or exposure are not available (Honkela et al., 2014). ...
EDCs are now known to be ubiquitous in the environment, especially in aquatic ecosystems. There is a need for a policy for assessing the risk and regulations for potential EDCs in the environment. Unique characteristics of EDCs such as critical timing of exposure, nonmonotonic low dose effects, mixture effects, and delayed effects need be incorporated in the risk assessment process. Policy options discussed includes scientific uncertainty and precautionary principle, burden of proving safe products, broadened risk assessment including epigenotoxicity and bioassays for developmental endpoints. Differing viewpoints of Conventional toxicology and endocrinology in the context of regulation of EDCs and the regulatory and policy differences in the European Union and United States are highlighted.
... There are five basic stages in analyzing and addressing risk [16,[35][36][37], as demonstrated in Fig. 1. Risk is generally defined as the product of hazard and exposure [38], taking into account uncertainty. Many contemporary RAs are based on the handful of early keystone frameworks such as the report "Risk assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the process," also called the "Red Book" by the United States National Research Council (US NRC) [36,39], and the NRC's more recent "Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment" referred to as the "Silver Book" [37]. ...
... A detailed, systematic, standardized risk assessment paradigm for EDCs has not been established due to the associated scientific ambiguities, testing complexities and administrative hurdles [38,[57][58][59]. To fully understand the reasons for the slow progress, it is important to consider the ways in which EDCs do not obey traditional principles of toxicology [56,60,61]. ...
... The use of EDCs is widespread and can be found in numerous consumer goods, such as cosmetic and pharmaceutical products. However, despite a deeply felt concern and massive efforts by the scientific community and nongovernmental organizations to evaluate the effects of EDCs (see e.g., Kortenkamp et al. 2011), regulatory communities worldwide have been slow to incorporate the chemicals posing endocrine concerns into existing legislations (Vogel 2004, Hecker and Hollert 2011, Honkela et al. 2014. Although some argue that the slow detection of EDCs stems from the novel nature of the chemicals (e.g., Scheffer et al. 2003), others argue that because EDCs embody a wide range of temporalities, such as vast time frames as well as nonlinear dose and effect relationships, governing EDCs within the current risk assessment paradigm focusing on quantitative data and methods is highly challenging (Adam 1998, Held 2001. ...
... Despite differences in the U.S. and EU institutions, most importantly the demand for screening versus establishment of universally applicable criteria to enable an authorization process, the basic second-order institutional rule that governs the formation of regulatory rules is the same in both Ecology and Society 19(4): 30 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol19/iss4/art30/ contexts (see Honkela et al. 2014). As one of the Finnish interviewees formulated the question in the EU: ...
The concept of temporal fit between biophysical systems and institutions has lately received great attention by scholars interested in environmental governance. Although we agree that the concept of temporal fit is a valuable approach for highlighting the temporal challenges of governance systems, we argue that the concept is currently lacking precision with regard to temporal complexity. We build on Barbara Adam’s work on “timescapes” to offer a more nuanced account of temporal fit and misfit. We illustrate the analytical usefulness of our approach by examining the regulation of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) within European Union’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), a case with amplified temporal challenges. We suggest that, when addressing temporal fit, two points require greater attention. First, similar to time, temporal misfits are complex. In REACH the temporal misfit is linked to four temporal features, time frame, sequence, tempo, and timing, contributing to the insufficiency of EDC regulation. Second, the temporal features are interlinked and feed back into each other, which strengthens the temporal misfit further. In conclusion, we propose that environmental impact assessment could be used as a tool to circumvent the regulatory paralysis of EDC regulation in Europe.
... Entre los textos con alto valor de relevancia, la gestión del riesgo, el análisis de riesgo y la gobernanza fueron los más recurrentes: CEC (2000) La gobernanza, a la cual consideramos una categoría más amplia, podría centrarse en el medio ambiente o en la innovación tecnológica, o incluir la gestión de riesgos, así como los aspectos de regulación de riesgos o la política pública, por lo cual se etiquetaron como gobernanza aquellos que usaban este término y que hacían referencia a una amplia participación de distintos actores: Throne-Hols (2008) Cabe mencionar haber etiquetado por separado evaluación de riesgos y análisis de riesgos al considerar que la primera constituye un eslabón del segundo, y en muchas ocasiones las discusiones se dan por separado. Los textos con la etiqueta evaluación de riesgos suelen enfocarse en criterios o enfoques utilizados para poder evaluarlos, es decir, son de tipo técnico, por ejemplo, el de la empresa aseguradora Swiss Re (2004) y también tratan la gestión de los riesgos: Montage (2004), Hansen et al. (2008, Wickson et al. (2010), Honkela et al. (2014), Hristozov (2016, Kuraj (2017). Otros autores tratan también el tema de las metodologías para evaluar los riesgos de los productos de la NT, dentro de ellos se ubican tres textos: Sweet (2006), SCENIHR-EC (2006), Canu et al. (2018). ...
En el presente texto se expone qué es el principio de precaución, así como la discusión en torno a porqué usarlo en el caso de la regulación y gestión de los productos de la nanotecnología. Así mismo, se exponen los resultados de la revisión de textos, principalmente académicos y oficiales, que discurren sobre el tema del principio de precaución en torno a la nanotecnología. Tras un análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo de 84 textos, se presentan los temas principales de discusión, años de publicación, relevancia de los textos para la discusión, así como las conclusiones respecto a la congruencia o no de usar el principio de precaución respecto nanotecnología.
... By framing we refer to how the participants "tame" the problems (Edzén, 2014) by moving from the realm of the unknown unknowns to making sense of the situation (Fig. 2). Even in the face of complete surprise and absence of knowledge, the human mind applies a variety of heuristic devices such as analogies and past experiences with which to impose ordered patterns on the situation (Hukkinen and Huutoniemi, 2014;Honkela et al., 2014). To understand the emergence of situational awareness and its relationship to decision-making, researchers in the POR need to document both the operational reasoning and practices, and the development of situational awareness among the participants. ...
The magnitude and speed of change in complex human-environmental systems pose a systemic dilemma for societies. Human-induced environmental changes have pushed Earth's socio-ecological systems into an era of chronic, complex, and rapid disruptions, which call for quick intuitive decisions and effective implementation. Yet the complexity, interconnectedness and long lead times of the problems would require thoughtful and time-consuming weighing of evidence by a broad range of experts. To address the dilemma, we develop a framework, the Policy Operations Room (POR), for simultaneous practice and analysis of decision-making that prevents decisions made under time pressure from leading to unwanted socio-ecological disruptions decades ahead. The POR framework is based on earlier research on control rooms of critical infrastructures and simulation exercises of emergency response, and preliminary data from our first experiments with PORs. It immerses the policymakers in a simulated "time machine" that combines the real-time reliability management of control rooms with the long-term planning for crisis avoidance and preparedness. The POR framework can contribute significantly to novel styles of decision-making by policymakers, engineers, and corporate strategists responsible for developing urgent, forward-looking, and evidence-based policies to cope with the coming challenges of human-environmental interaction.
... Experts must navigate opportunities to advance conservation as well as risks attached to extending legitimacy to knowledge claims characterized by substantial ambiguity. The concept of emergent knowledge has potentially significant implications for practices of knowledge brokerage and professional ethics (see, e.g., Honkela et al., 2013;Pielke, 2007). ...
We study how knowledge is produced at the intersection of science, environmental policy and public engagement. Based on analysis of monarch butterfly conservation, we critically evaluate models of knowledge production. The monarch butterfly and its migration have engaged science and enchanted people for over a century, and current threats to monarchs catalyze debates and actions. This paper traces the historical development of knowledge regarding (i) long-term monarch population trends, (ii) the monarch's dependence on a particular food plant, the milk-weed, and (iii) the monarch as a pollinator. Our analysis indicates that knowledge production and science–policy–practice interfaces cannot be satisfactorily understood through reference to the classical linear model and more recent conceptions of relationally produced knowledge (i.e. co-production). We identify powerful and sometimes contradictory knowledge claims that emerge from unmediated interactions among scientists, advocates, policy makers and diverse publics. The emergent model complements existing models of knowledge production, thereby expanding the conceptual foundation available for making sense of science–policy–practice interfaces. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
Eco-oriented makers and grassroots subcultures experimenting with digital fabrication technologies, and other activists designing sustainable futures, are increasingly the subject of research. As they address problems of environmental sustainability beyond institutional contexts, their work may appear vague, even confused, yet their activities are underpinned by intense and principled commitment. Working through their confusion, many maker communities build new understandings about what ‘sustainability’ could mean. We argue that herein lie important resources for new knowledge, and further that ethnography is the ideal way to track these processes of learning and knowledge production. The ethnographer participates in local confusion, over values and the definitions of sustainability, but also about what constitutes useful knowledge. Supported by STS (and other) literature on environmental expertise, we argue that maker communities' own acknowledgement of this vagueness actually makes possible a position from which epistemological authority can be reasserted.
As the UK renegotiates its relationships with Europe and the world, science and technology lie at the centre of a complex set of questions about governance, regulation, innovation and interdependence. By looking back over the past decade of experience with emerging science and technologies, we can draw important lessons, and use these to guide us as new technologies, political opportunities and uncertainties unfold.
This report, commissioned by the Wellcome Trust, is the product of a short project that aimed to review recent evidence on the governance of and public attitudes to science and technology. We reviewed published literature and policy reports from the period 2008 to 2018. Our aim was to map systematically the state of current evidence and interpret it in the light of longer-standing debates about science and technology governance and oversight.
This study formed part of a larger Wellcome project, detailed here: https://wellcome.ac.uk/reports/blueprint-oversight-emerging-science-and-technologies
The Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR) contains several provisions for nanomaterials (NMs) and is the first regulation in the European Union to require specific testing and risk assessment for the NM form of a biocidal substance as a part of the information requirements. Ecotoxicological data are one of the pillars of the information requirements in the BPR, but there are currently no standard test guidelines for the ecotoxicity testing of NMs. The overall objective of this work was to investigate the implications of the introduction of nano-specific testing requirements in the BPR and to explore how these might be fulfilled in the case of copper oxide nanoparticles. While there is information and data available in the open literature that could be used to fulfill the BPR information requirements, most of the studies do not take the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s nanospecific test guidelines into consideration. This makes it difficult for companies as well as regulators to fulfill the BPR information requirements for nanomaterials. In order to enable a nanospecific risk assessment, best practices need to be developed regarding stock suspension preparation and characterization, exposure suspensions preparation, and for conducting ecotoxicological test.
This reflective article explores how different regulatory regimes concerned with the industrial use of chemicals conceptualize chemicals as regulatory objects in different ways. The United States Toxic Substances Control Act characterizes chemicals as risky objects, the European Union's REACH regime characterizes chemicals as market objects and the Californian Green Chemistry Initiative characterizes chemicals as scientific objects. The malleability of chemicals as regulatory objects has implications for debates about international chemicals regulation, including the need for a more nuanced debate and greater regulatory imagination.
Ubiquitously present in the environment, many man made chemicals have a significant potential to interfere with our body's complex and carefully regulated hormonal messenger systems and cause adverse health effects. These endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are discussed in the book Endocrine Disruptors in the Environment published by Wiley (June 2014).
The book is divided in three parts and 14 chapters. An introductory chapter provides an overview of endocrine system, and endocrine disruptors, discussing their salient features and presenting a historical perspective of endocrine disruption phenomena. The first part includes seven chapters that cover hormone-signaling mechanisms, followed by various broad classes of putative endocrine disruptors and an introduction to environmental epigenetic modifications. The second part in two chapters focuses on removal processes of various EDCs by biotic and abiotic transformation/ degradation. The third and final part consists of four chapters, embracing themes on finding solutions to environmental EDCs including their detection, regulation, replacement and remediation.
Editorial team: Poul Harremoës (Chairman) David Gee (EEA editor) Malcolm MacGarvin (Executive editor) Andy Stirling (Editor) Jane Keys (Editor) Brian Wynne (Editor) Sofia Guedes Vaz (EEA editor) Project managers: David Gee and Sofia Guedes Vaz European Environment Agency Environmental issue report No 22
Making Social Science Matter presents an exciting new approach to social science, including theoretical argument, methodological guidelines, and examples of practical application. Why has social science failed in attempts to emulate natural science and produce normal theory? Bent Flyvbjerg argues that the strength of social science is in its rich, reflexive analysis of values and power, essential to the social and economic development of any society. Richly informed, powerfully argued, and clearly written, this book provides essential reading for all those in the social and behavioral sciences.
Through the European controversy over agricultural biotechnology, genetically modified (GM) crops have been evaluated for an increasingly wide range of potential effects. As the experimental phase has been extended into commercial practices, the terms for product approval have become more negotiable and contentious. To analyse the regulatory conflicts, this paper links three theoretical perspectives: issue-framing, agri-environmental discourses, and technological development as a real-world experiment.Agri-biotechnological risks have been framed by contending discourses, which attribute moral meanings to the agricultural environment. Agri-biotech proponents have emphasised eco-efficiency benefits, which can remedy past environmental damage, while critics have framed ‘uncontrollable risks’ in successively broader ways through ominous metaphors of environmental catastrophe. Regulatory authorities have translated those metaphors into measurable biophysical effects. They anticipate and design commercial use as a ‘real-world experiment’, by assigning greater moral-legal responsibility to agro-industrial operators who handle GM products.Expert-regulatory debate reflexively considers the social discipline necessary to prevent harm, now more broadly defined than before. Official procedures undergo tensions between predicting, testing and prescribing operator behaviour. In effect, GM crops have been kept continuously ‘on trial’.
It has long been recognized that the physical form of materials can mediate their toxicity—the health impacts of asbestiform
materials, industrial aerosols, and ambient particulate matter are prime examples. Yet over the past 20 years, toxicology
research has suggested complex and previously unrecognized associations between material physicochemistry at the nanoscale
and biological interactions. With the rapid rise of the field of nanotechnology and the design and production of increasingly
complex nanoscale materials, it has become ever more important to understand how the physical form and chemical composition
of these materials interact synergistically to determine toxicity. As a result, a new field of research has emerged—nanotoxicology.
Research within this field is highlighting the importance of material physicochemical properties in how dose is understood,
how materials are characterized in a manner that enables quantitative data interpretation and comparison, and how materials
move within, interact with, and are transformed by biological systems. Yet many of the substances that are the focus of current
nanotoxicology studies are relatively simple materials that are at the vanguard of a new era of complex materials. Over the
next 50 years, there will be a need to understand the toxicology of increasingly sophisticated materials that exhibit novel,
dynamic and multifaceted functionality. If the toxicology community is to meet the challenge of ensuring the safe use of this
new generation of substances, it will need to move beyond “nano” toxicology and toward a new toxicology of sophisticated materials.
Here, we present a brief overview of the current state of the science on the toxicology of nanoscale materials and focus on
three emerging toxicology-based challenges presented by sophisticated materials that will become increasingly important over
the next 50 years: identifying relevant materials for study, physicochemical characterization, and biointeractions.
Science studies has shown us why science and technology cannot always solve technical problems in the public domain. In particular, the speed of political decision-making is faster than the speed of scientific consensus formation. A predominant motif over recent years has been the need to extend the domain of technical decision-making beyond the technically qualified elite so as to enhance political legitimacy. We argue, however, that theProblem of Legitimacy' has been replaced theProblem of Extension.' This is a tendency to dissolve the boundary between experts and the public so that there are no longer any grounds for limiting the indefinite extension of technical decision-making rights. We argue that a Third Wave of science studies -- Studies of Expertise and Experience (SEE) -- is needed to solve the Problem of Extension. SEE will include a normative theory of expertise and will disentangle expertise from political rights in technical decision-making. The theory builds categories of expertise starting with the key distinction between interactive expertise and contributory expertise. A new categorisation of types of science is also needed. We illustrate the potential of the approach by re-examining existing case studies including Wynne's study of Cumbrian sheep farmers. Sometimes the new theory argues for more public involvement, sometimes for less. An Appendix describes existing contributions to the problem of technical decision-making in the public domain.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the acute lung toxicity of intratracheally instilled single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) in rats. The lungs of rats were instilled either with 1 or 5 mg/kg of the following control or particle types: (1) SWCNT, (2) quartz particles (positive control), (3) carbonyl iron particles (negative control), (4) phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) + 1% Tween 80, or (5) graphite particles (lung tissue studies only). Following exposures, the lungs of PBS and particle-exposed rats were assessed using bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid biomarkers and cell proliferation methods, and by histopathological evaluation of lung tissue at 24 h, 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months postinstillation. Exposures to high-dose (5 mg/kg) SWCNT produced mortality in ~15% of the SWCNT-instilled rats within 24 h postinstillation. This mortality resulted from mechanical blockage of the upper airways by the instillate and was not due to inherent pulmonary toxicity of the instilled SWCNT particulate. Exposures to quartz particles produced significant increases versus controls in pulmonary inflammation, cytotoxicity, and lung cell parenchymal cell proliferation indices. Exposures to SWCNT produced transient inflammatory and cell injury effects. Results from the lung histopathology component of the study indicated that pulmonary exposures to quartz particles (5 mg/kg) produced dose-dependent inflammatory responses, concomitant with foamy alveolar macrophage accumulation and lung tissue thickening at the sites of normal particle deposition. Pulmonary exposures to carbonyl iron or graphite particles produced no significant adverse effects. Pulmonary exposures to SWCNT in rats produced a non-dose-dependent series of multifocal granulomas, which were evidence of a foreign tissue body reaction and were nonuniform in distribution and not progressive beyond 1 month postexposure (pe). The observation of SWCNT-induced multifocal granulomas is inconsistent with the following: (1) lack of lung toxicity by assessing lavage parameters, (2) lack of lung toxicity by measuring cell proliferation parameters, (3) an apparent lack of a dose response relationship, (4) nonuniform distribution of lesions, (5) the paradigm of dust-related lung toxicity effects, (6) possible regression of effects over time. In addition, the results of two recent exposure assessment studies indicate very low aerosol SWCNT exposures at the workplace. Thus, the physiological relevance of these findings should ultimately be determined by conducting an inhalation toxicity study.
Nanotechnology has emerged at the forefront of science research and technology development. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are major building blocks of this new technology. They possess unique electrical, mechanical, and thermal properties, with potential wide applications in the electronics, computer, aerospace, and other industries. CNTs exist in two forms, single-wall (SWCNTs) and multi-wall (MWCNTs). They are manufactured predominately by electrical arc discharge, laser ablation and chemical vapor deposition processes; these processes involve thermally stripping carbon atoms off from carbon-bearing compounds. SWCNT formation requires catalytic metals. There has been a great concern that if CNTs, which are very light, enter the working environment as suspended particulate matter (PM) of respirable sizes, they could pose an occupational inhalation exposure hazard. Very recently, MWCNTs and other carbonaceous nanoparticles in fine (
This study examines the failure of a small but significant element of U.S. chemical regulatory policy: the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program (EDSP). A range of conditions are implicated in the failure of this program, but one condition, the scientific testing and regulation paradigm (STRP), seems particularly important and ties the failure of EDSP to the failure of other U.S. chemical regulatory programs. This paradigm is a group of assumptions that have driven pesticide (and other chemical) regulatory policy since World War II. This study investigates the relationship between STRP and the failure of EDSP, the potential efficacy of alternatives to this program, and one alternative that broke from this paradigm. Ultimately, this study suggests that we must revise the role of science in regulation in order to find effective alternatives to modern chemical regulatory policy. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2004
Objets fronti_re = s'adaptent pour prendre en compte plusieurs points de vue et maintenir une identité entre eux Cet espace de travail se construit grâce à des objets-frontières tels que des systèmes de classification, qui relient entre eux les concepts communs et les rôles sociaux divergents de chaque groupe professionnel. Les objet-frontière contribuent à la stabilité du système de référence en offrant un contexte partagé pour la communication et la coopération. Les objets peuvent être considérés comme frontière (Star et Griesemer, 1989) en tant qu’ils contribuent à la stabilité du système de référence en offrant un contexte partagé pour la communication et la coopération.
Both risk and uncertainty are neo-liberal concepts, which can be viewed as complementary techniques for governing diverse aspects of life, rather than natural states of things. This new book examines the way these constructs govern the production of wealth through 'uncertain' speculation and 'calculable' investment formulae.
'Risk Governance is a tour de force. Every risk manager, every risk analyst, every risk researcher must read this book - it is the demarcation point for all further advances in risk policy and risk research. Renn provides authoritative guidance on how to manage risks based on a definitive synthesis of the research literature. The skill with which he builds practical recommendations from solid science is unprecedented.' Thomas Dietz, Director, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Michigan State University, USA "A masterpiece of new knowledge and wisdom with illustrative examples of tested applications to realworld cases. The book is recommendable also to interested students in different disciplines as a timely textbook on 'risk beyond risk'." Norio Okada, Full Professor and Director at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Japan 'There are classic environmental works such as The Tragedy of the Commons by Hardin, Risk Society by Beck, The Theory of Communicative Action by Habermas, and the seminal volumes by Ostrom on governing the commons. Renn's book fits right into this series of important milestones of environmental studies.' Jochen Jaeger, Professor at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada 'Risk Governance provides a valuable survey of the whole field of risk and demonstrates how scientific, economic, political and civil society actors can participate in inclusive risk governance.' Jobst Conrad, Senior Scientist, Social Science Research Center Berlin, Germany 'Renn offers a remarkably fair-minded and systematic approach to bringing together the diverse fields that have something to say about 'risk'. Risk Governance moves us along the path from the noisy, formative stage of thinking about risk to one with a stronger empirical, theoretical, and analytical foundation.' Baruch Fischhoff, PhD, Howard Heinz University Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA 'I cannot describe how impressed I am at the breadth and coherence of Renn's career's work! Written with remarkable clarity and minimal technical jargon… [this] should be required reading in risk courses!' John Graham, former director of the Harvard Risk Center and former deputy director of the Office of Budget and Management of the Unites States Administration This book, for the first time, brings together and updates the groundbreaking work of renowned risk theorist and researcher Ortwin Renn, integrating the major disciplinary concepts of risk in the social, engineering and natural sciences. The book opens with the context of risk handling before flowing through the core topics of assessment, evaluation, perception, management and communication, culminating in a look at the transition from risk management to risk governance and a glimpse at a new understanding of risk in (post)modern societies.
In this paper we describe a five-stage phenomenological model of skill acquisition, of which expertise is the highest stage. Contrary to the claims of knowledge engineers, we argue that expertise in general, and medical expertise in particular, cannot be captured in rule-based expert systems, since expertise is based on the making of immediate, unreflective situational responses; intuitive judgment is the hallmark of expertise. Deliberation is certainly used by experts, if time permits, but it is done for the purpose of improving intuition, not replacing it. The best way to avoid mistakes is to take responsibility for them when they occur, rather than try to prevent them by foolproof rules. In bureaucratic societies, however, there is the danger that expertise may be diminished through over-reliance on calculative rationality.
THE RECENT DECISION by electronics retailer Best Buy to stop selling analog televisions confirmed that a new technology had finally displaced an old one. Around the same time, Japanese electronics maker Sony announced that it would launch the first TV using organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology. It comes with a small 11-inch screen and large $1,700 price tag. Consumers know all too well that high prices and limited availability are typical for new technologies. Prices decline and consumption grows when manufacturers improve and expand production. Markets for carbon nanotubes are experiencing these same dynamics. Carbon nanotubes, which are hexagonal lattices of carbon atoms rolled into minuscule singleor multiple-layer tubes, have unique physical properties. Expensive lab curiosities just 15 years ago, they are now moving into real-world uses, and producers are upping capacity to meet demand. Although nanomaterial providers say Sony’s OLED TVs don’t contain nanotubes, displays and other electronics devices are key target markets, especially ...
Scientific work is heterogeneous, requiring many different actors and viewpoints. It also requires cooperation. The two create tension between divergent viewpoints and the need for generalizable findings. We present a model of how one group of actors managed this tension. It draws on the work of amateurs, professionals, administrators and others connected to the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, during its early years. Extending the Latour-Callon model of interessement, two major activities are central for translating between viewpoints: standardization of methods, and the development of `boundary objects'. Boundary objects are both adaptable to different viewpoints and robust enough to maintain identity across them. We distinguish four types of boundary objects: repositories, ideal types, coincident boundaries and standardized forms.
Drawing on Flyvbjerg’s (2001) call for the development of phronetic social science, this paper argues that much current research into pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) is misguided, and even potentially dangerous. After outlining Flyvbjerg’s argument, it reviews existing work on PEB and argues that, to date, it has predominantly sought after the Aristotelian intellectual virtues of either episteme or techne, and has neglected phronesis which Aristotle himself saw as most important. It then explores the ways in which aspects of a phronetic approach are being developed in cultural geography and environmental sociology, before offering a brief empirical case study of a PEB-change initiative to illustrate what a phronetic approach to research might look like. It concludes by calling for an improved and more reflexive dialogue between PEB researchers regarding the purpose and approach of their work, both in order to improve the relevance and impact of their research, and in order to help individuals and communities understand and confront the significant environmental challenges they currently face.
In this paper we argue that the concept and practice of responsibility is being transformed within science and engineering. It tells the story of attempts by nanotechnologists to make responsibility 'do-able' and calculable in a setting where the established language and tools of risk and risk analysis are seen as inadequate. The research is based on ethnographic participant-observation at the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) at Rice University in Texas, during the period 2003 to 2007, including the controversies and public discussions it was engaged in and the creation of the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON). CBEN began as a project to study 'applications' of nanotechnology to environmental and biological systems, but turned immediately to the study of 'implications' to biology and environment. We argue here that the notion of 'implications' and the language of risk employed early on addressed two separate but entangled ideas: the risks that nanomaterials pose to biology and environment, and the risks that research on this area poses to the health of nanotechnology itself. Practitioners at CBEN sought ways to accept responsibility both as scientists with a duty to protect science (from the public, from de-funding, from 'backlash') and as citizens with a responsibility to protect the environment and biology through scientific research. Ultimately, the language of risk has failed, and in its place ideas about responsibility, prudence, and accountability for the future have emerged, along with new questions about the proper venues and 'modes of veridiction' by which claims about safety or responsibility might be scientifically adjudicated.
This article addresses the role of science and science advisory bodies in modeling practices for the support of policy-making procedures in the Netherlands in the field of health care. The authors show, based on a detailed investigation of a prestigious interdisciplinary modeling project in which an economic care model was developed for governmental use, that science advisory bodies are entangled with the policy actors they advise in what we call boundary configurations. Boundary configurations are strongly situated interconnections between science advisory institutes and policy institutions that share a specific approach to problem definitions and methods and that are embedded in (and at the same time embed) specific social, discursive, and material elements. Importantly, as the case study shows, such boundary configurations shape the kind of science, and related, the kind of social and political theories about the world, that is effectuated in modeling practices. In this case study, the boundary configuration in which economic experts and policy makers participated contributed to the articulation of health care in terms of a market-based policy program for the health care sector.
Two decades of social and political analysis have helped to enrich the concept of risk that underlies the bulk of modern environmental regulation. Risk is no longer seen merely as the probability of harm arising from more or less determinable physical, biological or social causes. Instead, it seems more appropriate to view risk as the embodiment of deeply held cultural values and beliefs - the songlines of the paper's title - concerning such issues as agency, causation, and uncertainty. These values are incorporated into the formal methodologies, such as quantitative risk assessment, by which industrial societies assess risk. The meaning of risk accordingly varies from one cultural context to another, posing difficult problems for global environmental governance. The paper reflects on the role of science in promoting convergent perceptions of risk across disparate political cultures.
The double bind is a recurrent characteristic of life, not limited to the context of psychopathology, where the concept was first developed within the narrowed focus of Batesons work during his period in Palo Alto. Bateson pointed out that it is not appropriate or possible to count double binds: it is also not appropriate or possible to prevent their occurrence. Instead, we should ask why some individuals are particularly vulnerable and how education can strengthen individuals to deal with multiple logical levels.
The past 15 years in Finland have witnessed a diversification among environmental experts. In addition to engineers and biologists, increasing numbers of environmental scientists – from both the natural and social sciences – have entered the job market. Universities in Finland have tried to respond to this challenge by implementing innovative forms of environmental education. This article inquires into the experiences of Finnish environmental social scientists who have received a form of education that explicitly aims at increasing their capacity to discern social and ecological nuances in environmental issues. These ideas seem to promote a particular form of “practical wisdom” or phronesis. The article analyses a set of interviews with both supporters of, and participating students in, two educational programmes with “phronetic” aims to assess how these new environmental experts define their expertise and professional identities. We claim that students had to learn to frame and contextualise not only complex environmental issues, but also their own abilities and capacities as analysts of such complex issues. The research results are useful for strategic decision-making in both environmental and science policy.
At the interface between politics and science-informed regulatory action there is hardly a more controversial combination in Europe today than the recently adopted chemicals policy overhaul entitled Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of CHemicals (REACH) and the precautionary principle (PP). The European Commission states that REACH is underpinned by the PP. However, it is not evident how this is crystallized throughout the registration, evaluation and authorization process of REACH. Additionally, it is unclear how REACH will proactively support development of safer alternatives, a key component of precaution. The present paper examines to what extent the PP has actually been integrated in REACH. Several elements of the PP are included in REACH such as changing the burden of proof and assessment of alternatives. However, a number of important elements apparently are missing. This paper outlines some of the limitations in REACH for applying precaution and discusses possible improvements of the REACH framework to make it more supportive of precautionary decision-making.
The work of Gregory Bateson, particularly his principles for a new kind of science which, in 1958 “had as yet no satisfactory name”, is revisited as a foundation for post-normal science and adaptive approaches to management of complex environmental problems. The addition of usefulness and relevance of results to decision-making as quality criteria in post-normal science implies inquiry into context at different levels of complexity (what Bateson refers to as deutero-learning). This in turn implies emphasis on processes that facilitate inclusion of diverse perspectives—which facilitates an understanding of relationships among different aspects of a problem; also, social learning, an adaptive approach to valuation that also inquires into the process by which values are constructed, and a reflexive approach to decision-making. Though marginalized from policy discourse, Bateson's principles provided the basis for the eventual development of a new shared understanding.
Precautionary regulation of persistent, toxic substances is controversial because of continued and irresolvable uncertainties in ecotoxicology. This is especially an issue for people who eat wild food, still a common practice in the Arctic. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have been shown to interfere with hormone function and genetic regulation. In animal studies, myriad dysfunctions can be induced (manifested later in life) by low-dose POPs exposure during development. The ubiquity of POPs in biological tissue makes all organisms subject to developmental exposure. The Arctic, where subsistence living is common, is a sink region for POPs. To curtail bioaccumulation and biomagnification, the United Nations has created the Stockholm Convention in May 2001, which targets 12 chemicals for virtual elimination. Using the precautionary approach, the treaty also enables the listing of new targets as threats are recognized. The “dirty dozen” are well-documented developmental toxics and other POPs are expected to exhibit similar patterns of accumulation and harm. Arctic peoples insist that waiting for irrefutable evidence is poor planning. Nevertheless, the United States, a major signatory, has proved reluctant to ratify the language that would enable this expedient listing of new targets. Such reluctance allows health threats in the Arctic and around the world to grow. This paper reviews the theoretical background for and current evidence regarding the global issues of endocrine disruption and POPs contamination, especially as they relate to wildlife and people in the far north. It is concluded that there is an urgent need for the US to ratify the full text of the Stockholm Convention, including the provision for the listing of new targets.
Approaches to visual skilling from anthropology and STS have tended to highlight the forces of discipline and control in understanding how shared visual accounts of the world are created in the face of potential differences brought about by multi-sensorial perception. Drawing upon a range of observational and interview material from an immersion in naturalist training and biological recording activities between 2003 and 2009, I focus upon jizz, a distinct form of gestalt perception much coveted by naturalist communities in the UK. Jizz is described as a tacit and embodied way of seeing that instantaneously reveals the identity of a species, relying upon but simultaneously suspending the arduous and meticulous study of an organism's diagnostic characteristics. I explore the potential and limitations of jizz to allow for both visual precision and an enchanted and varied form of encounter with nature. In so doing, I explore how the specific characteristics of wild, intangible and irreverent virtuoso performance work closely together with disciplining taxonomic standards. As such, discipline and irreverence work together, are mutually enabling, and allow for an accommodation rather than a segregation of potential difference brought about by perceptual variety.
It is suggested that the recognition of new business opportunities often involves pattern recognition--the cognitive process through which individuals identify meaningful patterns in complex arrays of events or trends. Basic research on pattern recognition indicates that cognitive frameworks acquired through experience (e.g., prototypes) play a central role in this process. Such frameworks provide individuals with a basis for noticing connections between seemingly independent events or trends (e.g., advances in technology, shifts in markets, changes in government policies, etc.), and for detecting meaningful patterns in these connections. We propose that ideas for new products or services often emerge from the perception of such patterns. New business opportunities are identified when entrepreneurs, using relevant cognitive frameworks, "connect the dots" between seemingly unrelated events or trends and then detect patterns in these connections suggestive of new products or services. To obtain evidence on these proposals, we compared the "business opportunity" prototypes of novice (first-time) and repeat (experienced) entrepreneurs--their cognitive representations of the essential nature of opportunities. As predicted, the prototypes of experienced entrepreneurs were more clearly defined, richer in content, and more concerned with factors and conditions related to actually starting and running a new venture (e.g., generation of positive cash flow) than the prototypes of novice entrepreneurs. These findings offer support for the view that pattern recognition is a key component of opportunity recognition.
The preparation of a new type of finite carbon structure consisting of
needlelike tubes is reported. Produced using an arc-discharge
evaporation method similar to that used for fullerene sythesis, the
needles grow at the negative end of the electrode used for the arc
discharge. Electron microscopy reveals that each needle comprises
coaxial tubes of graphitic sheets ranging in number from two up to about
50. On each tube the carbon-atom hexagons are arranged in a helical
fashion about the needle axis. The helical pitch varies from needle to
needle and from tube to tube within a single needle. It appears that
this helical structure may aid the growth process. The formation of
these needles, ranging from a few to a few tens of nanometers in
diameter, suggests that engineering of carbon structures should be
possible on scales considerably greater than those relevant to the
fullerenes.
In this paper we explore the temporalities entailed in scientists' accounts of their research into the use of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) to develop beta cells for the treatment of diabetes. Stem cell scientists, by virtue of working in what is still a controversial field, find themselves engaged with a variety of more or less transparent futures, or more or less cogent expectations, about the trajectories of their research. In this paper, we initially examine a number of dimensions to these futures. At the formal level, we consider—in contrast to much of the sociological literature on futures and expectations, which has primarily focused upon the performativity of futures that are concrete, transparent, or well-articulated—futures whose import lies in their very opacity, vagueness, or immanence. We do this with the aid of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's notions of "epistemic things" and "technical objects," primarily because this dichotomy reflects the divergent temporalities of, respectively, immanent and concrete futures.
However, we also take issue with Rheinberger's exclusive orientation toward the epistemic. In a technoscientific field that is as controversial as human embryonic stem cells, scientists are overtly concerned not only with the ways in which knowledge about human embryonic stem cells is produced, but also, on the one hand, with how their work is to be regulated or rendered ethical, and, on the other, with the institutional context that enables them to enter into cross-disciplinary collaborations in order to see their work translated "from the laboratory to the bedside." In other words, we examine how, at the substantive level, futures address a range of concerns—ethical and political (or institutional) as well as epistemic—that draw in a variety of constituencies, including other-disciplinary colleagues, regulators, funders, and publics. Moreover, while Rheinberger's dichotomy of objects and things serves to structure our discussion of the way scientists talk about stem cell research, we also expand on these concepts in order to address a more extended time frame (at least beyond the temporalities entailed in the experimental process on which Rheinberger concentrates).
In sum, we aim at once to advance some of the theoretical concerns of the sociology of expectations by exploring the discursive utility of the "vagueness" and "immanence" of futures, and, in keeping with much contemporary sociology of science (notably actor-network theory) we aim to widen, or heterogenize, the range of substantive futures with which scientists are engaged.
Now, to demonstrate how the epistemic cohabits with the ethical and the institutional/political is, of course, hardly novel nowadays. Our particular contribution to this "amodern project" is to show how each of these entails contrasting future temporalities, and how all of these temporalities have important roles to play in scientists' epistemic, ethical, and institutional positionings. Moreover, again in keeping with the "amodern," we are suspicious of the ease with which the epistemic, the ethical, and the institutional analytically shake out. That is to say, we are interested in exploring—and we emphasize the exploratory nature of this exercise—ways in which the epistemic, ethical, and institutional might be reenvisioned. On this score, we draw on recent reworkings of Aristotle's notion of phronesis in order to suggest that hESCs might be better conceptualized as "phronesic things," as a first step toward rethinking and reconfiguring the epistemic-ethical-political futures of human embryonic stem cells.
Rheinberger's dichotomy of "epistemic things" and "technical objects" provides a useful starting point for expanding upon the temporal character of stem cell scientists' accounts of the trajectories of their research. As noted, and elaborated below, Rheinberger's sensitivity to the immanent casts a different light onto the role of expectations in the research process.
According to Rheinberger, "at the basis of biological research, [there is] the choice of system, and a range of maneuvers that it allows us to perform" (p. 25). In this context, "the experimental scientist deals with systems of experiments that usually are not well defined and do not provide clear answers" (p. 27); Instead, "Experimental systems are vehicles for materializing questions. They inextricably cogenerate the phenomena or material entities and the concepts they come to embody" (p. 28). Now, within...
In this powerful work of conceptual and analytical originality, the author argues for the primacy of the material arrangements of the laboratory in the dynamics of modern molecular biology. In a post-Kuhnian move away from the hegemony of theory, he develops a new epistemology of experimentation in which research is treated as a process for producing epistemic things. A central concern of the book is the basic question of how novelty is generated in the empirical sciences. In addressing this question, the author brings French poststructuralist thinkingânotably Jacques Derridaâs concepts of âdifféranceâ and âhistorialityââto bear on the construction of epistemic things. Historiographical perspective shifts from the actorsâ minds to their objects of manipulation. These epistemological and historical issues are illuminated in a detailed case study of a particular laboratory, that of the oncologist and biochemist Paul C. Zamecnik and his colleagues, located in a specific settingâthe Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital of Harvard University at the Massachusetts General Hospital of Boston. The author traces how, between 1945 and 1965, this group developed an experimental system for synthesizing proteins in the test tube that put Zamecnikâs research team at the forefront of those who led biochemistry into the era of molecular biology.
A new technology will only be successful if those promoting it can show
that it is safe, but history is littered with examples of promising
technologies that never fulfilled their true potential and/or caused
untold damage because early warnings about safety problems were ignored.
The nanotechnology community stands to benefit by learning lessons from
this history.
Two decades of social and political analysis have helped to enrich the concept of risk that underlies the bulk of modern environmental regulation. Risk is no longer seen merely as the probability of harm arising from more or less determinable physical, biological or social causes. Instead, it seems more appropriate to view risk as the embodiment of deeply held cultural values and beliefs the songlines of the paper's title concerning such issues as agency, causation, and uncertainty. These values are incorporated into the formal methodologies, such as quantitative risk assessment, by which industrial societies assess risk. The meaning of risk accordingly varies from one cultural context to another, posing difficult problems for global environmental governance. The paper reflects on the role of science in promoting convergent perceptions of risk across disparate political cultures.
The Making of Green Knowledge: Environmental Politics and Cultural Transformation Levels of learning in environmental expertise: from generalism to personally indexed specialisation
- A Jamison
Jamison, A., 2001. The Making of Green Knowledge: Environmental Politics and Cultural Transformation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Janasik, N., Salmi, O., Castá n Broto, V., 2010. Levels of learning in environmental expertise: from generalism to personally indexed specialisation. Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences 7 (4) 297–313.
Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis A review of carbon nanotube toxicity and assessment of potential occupational and environmental health risks
- S Krimsky
- John Hopkings
- Baltimore
- London
- C.-W Lam
Krimsky, S., 2000. Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis. John Hopkings, Baltimore/London. Lam, C.-W., et al., 2006. A review of carbon nanotube toxicity and assessment of potential occupational and environmental health risks. Critical Reviews in Toxicology 36, 189–217.
Confessions of a ''media hog
- A Maynard
Maynard, A., 2009a. Confessions of a ''media hog''. Science,
http://2020science.org/.