14-1190b-innovation-managing-risk-evidence

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62 the most powerful — taking more direct and explicit responsibility for the consequences and uncertainties of their activities. As addressed in Chapter 9, this involves serious effort to be reflective in anticipating, describing and analysing the impacts that might arise, as well as the attendant ambiguities and unknowns. This helps to avoid the ‘organized irresponsibility’ of otherwise passing the buck to insurers, regulators, victims, the state, or society at large to deal with inevitable unintended and indirect outcomes 301 . Assisted by public engagement, responsibility involves being more open about the motivating aims and interests of relevant actors. Responsibility is not about aspiring — let alone claiming — to predict or control consequences. Nor is it about simple exhortations to trust 302 . Instead, responsibility is about trustworthiness 303 . It means going beyond conventionally narrow institutional and economic interests, to care — and be accountable — for wider social and environmental implications. Crucially, the aim of responsibility is not to assert a single definitive technical authority, as is too often emphasized in conventional risk regulation. Instead, responsibility informs engagement by helping illuminate a range of contending directions for decision making. There is nothing about this process that should make decision making more protracted or burdensome. Indeed, by helping to avert ill-advised trajectories at an early stage, engagement and responsibility can enable innovation to become more effective in addressing social values 40 . This does suggest particular responsibilities for the media, though. The discussion in this chapter has shown that it is quite simply irresponsible to pretend (as is too often the case) that science and technology are apolitical. What is required instead is a less simplistic and romantic portrayal of technical expertise. The media hold especially important responsibilities for enabling more realistic, mature and open debates about the inherently contestable and power-laden nature of both scientific knowledge and technological innovation. This leads to the third and final general policy implication: that greater and more deliberate efforts are needed to moderate the powerful forces of closure and ‘lock-in’ in science and technology. This chapter has described the particular value of precaution as a way to address this point. Rather than treating existing patterns of research and innovation as value-free, the precautionary principle strikes a stronger balance under uncertainty, in favour of human health, environmental integrity and social well-being in steering innovation priorities. Thus guided by precaution, engagement and responsibility can elucidate more clearly what might be meant by these values in any given context. Together, these complementary imperatives help to provide a counterweight to otherwise dominant incumbent interests. In particular, precaution directly addresses the tendencies for uncertainties, ambiguities and ignorance to be closed down in the most convenient directions, as if they were just ‘risk’. Once innovation is recognized as a branching rather than single-track process, it becomes clear that precaution is also not about impeding innovation, but steering it. Innovation is fundamentally about the politics of contending hopes. Acknowledging the scope for systematic deliberation over values, priorities and alternatives in the context of uncertainty, precaution broadens out risk regulation to allow greater consideration for a wider plurality of issues, options, perspectives and scenarios. This can help enable entrepreneurs, smaller businesses, new entrants, civil society groups and marginalized interests (as well as government) to challenge and reshape established trajectories. As we have seen, precaution also implies a greater focus on qualities of diversity, flexibility and responsiveness. And a final key lesson of precaution is that research and innovation policy should seek to respect and embrace (rather than manage or curtail) public mobilization and critical dissent. In essence, precaution expresses the fundamental principle that — in innovation just as in science itself — reasoned scepticism fosters greater quality. Further practical implications of these principles of participation, responsibility and precaution are returned to in the Government Chief Scientific Advisor’s Annual Report 2014. But in concluding this chapter, we return to a point made at the beginning. In any given area, innovation is not so much about a race to optimize a single pathway, but a collaborative process for exploring diverse alternatives. Current noisy anxieties over single-track competitive innovation races tend to be driven by expedient pressures from incumbent interests. These can conceal or deny underlying motives, uncertainties and alternatives. Instead, the three principles of participation, responsibility and precaution can help innovation policy escape from currently narrow (often fear-driven) supposed technical inevitabilities. They illuminate how innovation is fundamentally about the politics of contending hopes 21 . Most importantly of all, it is perhaps only in these ways that we can move away from narrowly technocratic ideas of a knowledge economy 246 , to nurture instead a more realistic, rational and vibrant innovation democracy. A more fully referenced version of this paper is posted at http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/prfh0/innovation_democracy. pdf
Tim O’Riordan (University of East Anglia) 63 CHAPTER 5: HOLDING A WIDER CONVERSATION It is necessary – and unavoidable – for innovation policy to include a broader range of views, as the experiences of the GM and radioactive waste disposal consultations demonstrate.
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INNOVATION: MANAGING RISK, NOT AVOI
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FOREWORD Advances in science and te
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EDITOR AND CHAPTER AUTHORS 6 Editor
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8 CASE STUDY AUTHORS Framing Risk -
Page 11: Global Alliance for Vaccines and Im
Page 14 and 15: 14 INTRODUCTION In today’s global
Page 16 and 17: 16 Investors face additional risks
Page 18 and 19: 18 unclear patent law), or barriers
Page 20 and 21: More problematically, system-wide r
Page 22 and 23: 22 is unwilling or unable to undert
Page 24 and 25: 24 innovation process, or one secto
Page 26 and 27: 2 1. TRENDS IN INNOVATION AND GLOBA
Page 28 and 29: 28 the body. Nanoparticles generate
Page 30 and 31: access to education that are occurr
Page 32 and 33: to seek opportunities for more subs
Page 34 and 35: 34 Middle East and Africa mean that
Page 36 and 37: At their core, decisions are about
Page 38 and 39: 38 CASE STUDY CONSISTENCY AND TRANS
Page 40 and 41: 40 within Her Majesty’s Inspector
Page 42 and 43: 42 liabilities. The coalition gover
Page 44 and 45: 44 Advances in the life sciences co
Page 46 and 47: SECTION 2: UNCERTAINTY, COMMUNICATI
Page 49 and 50: Andy Stirling (Science Policy Resea
Page 51 and 52: as a whole, for seeding and selecti
Page 53 and 54: information concerning public polic
Page 55 and 56: Kingdom. It has 34 participating an
Page 57 and 58: Cinderella, too often uninvited to
Page 59 and 60: have been awarded in rational choic
Page 61: ecomes easier to accept and justify
Page 65 and 66: CASE STUDY HUMAN RIGHTS AND RISK Ka
Page 67 and 68: give the impression that certain ki
Page 69 and 70: adioactive waste in many countries
Page 71 and 72: David Spiegelhalter (University of
Page 73 and 74: course, means that 1% are violent,
Page 75 and 76: level was announced on 22 January 2
Page 77 and 78: Even in situations with limited evi
Page 79 and 80: Steve Elliott (Chemical Industries
Page 81 and 82: THE NGO PERSPECTIVE Harry Huyton (R
Page 84 and 85: SECTION 3: FRAMING RISK — THE HUM
Page 87 and 88: David Halpern and Owain Service (Be
Page 89 and 90: letter and discovered that this is
Page 91 and 92: measures have been put in place and
Page 93 and 94: Nick Pidgeon and Karen Henwood (Car
Page 95 and 96: equity of risk distribution, the pe
Page 97 and 98: individual include the emergence of
Page 99 and 100: domain of biosecurity risks. In the
Page 101 and 102: Edmund Penning-Rowsell (University
Page 103 and 104: — that is, governed by random pro
Page 105 and 106: 90% 80% Media scare stories linking
Page 107 and 108: Judith Petts (University of Southam
Page 109 and 110: The impact of intuition on response
Page 111 and 112: policy has moved towards less-inten
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more children, raising the risk of
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Nick Beckstead (University of Oxfor
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CASE STUDY POLICY, DECISION-MAKING
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might be developed, and what the li
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Julia Slingo (Met Office Chief Scie
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transport disruption, wind damage,
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the premiums that we have received
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Only three GM crops have been appro
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Joyce Tait (University of Edinburgh
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evidence used to support policy and
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1). In essence, the more developed
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that engage with policy decisions o
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Lisa Jardine (University College Lo
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debate, which enabled the non-scien
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again concluded that there was stil
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we had been at such pains to educat
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ANNEX: INTERNATIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS
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center of Paris has led to a comple
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production of unconventional hydroc
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3.3. The current difficulty faced b
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• How can we give entrepreneurs s
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As experienced by the World Trade O
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nanodashboard.nano.gov/. 77. See Ma
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41. Vanichkorn, S. and Banchongduan
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22. OECD. Dynamising National Innov
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engagement. London: Zed Books; 2005
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science and technology. Washington
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structural model. Risk Analysis 12(
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Chalmers, David John. (2010). “Th
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