Tag Archives: Yale Law School

Nanopinion in France and elsewhere in Europe

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Anne Fleischman has written a July 3, 2013 article (Pluie de science; Avis d’inexpert) for Québec’s Agence Science-Presse that focuses on the European nanotechnology dialogue project, Nanopinion and its efforts in France and elsewhere in Europe. I last mentioned Nanopinion in an April 23, 2013 posting concerning their sponsored initiative (combined advertising and editorial content?)  in the UK’s Guardian newspaper,

Small World, a nanotechnology blog, was launched today (Tuesday, Apr. 23, 2013)  on the UK’s Guardian newspaper science blogs network. Here’s more from the Introductory page,

Small World is a blog about new developments in nanotechnology funded by Nanopinion, a European Commission project. All the posts are commissioned by the Guardian, which has complete editorial control over the blog’s contents. The views expressed are those of the authors and not the EC

This summer (2013), Nanopinion will be polling the French and other Europeans regarding their opinion on nanotechnology. From Fleischman’s article (although I will provide a bit of translation, it might be best if you have some French language skills),

Cet été, un peu partout en Europe, on sonde l’opinion du public sur les nanotechnologies. Les gens n’y connaissent rien? Peut-être, mais ils ont certainement quelque chose à en dire.

Avec le projet NANOPINION, l’Europe prend le taureau par les cornes: au lieu d’attendre qu’un éventuel scandale sanitaire vienne éclabousser l’industrie tout en traumatisant les esprits au sujet de ces si mystérieuses nanotechnologies, onze Européens ont décidé de sonder l’opinion publique. Le but: faire remonter les impressions à chaud des populations.

«On ne prétend pas demander à quiconque de se forger une opinion définitive en cinq minutes. Il s’agit de tâter le pouls des gens et de leur faire prendre conscience que, même s’ils n’y connaissent pas grand-chose a priori, ils ont quand même le droit d’avoir un avis», explique Didier Laval, chargé de mission au Réseau des Musées et Centres de science européens, ECSITE, l’un des porteurs du projet.

L’idée: pas la peine d’avoir un doctorat en physique pour avoir voix au chapitre. Une approche qui ouvre la porte à une autre manière d’appréhender la culture scientifique. «Comment motiver des gens à participer à un débat public s’ils sont convaincus qu’ils sont trop ignorants pour le faire? Avec NANOPINION, on veut leur prouver qu’avec très peu d’information de base au départ, ils peuvent quand même se forger une première impression sur un sujet qui les concerne directement même s’ils n’en ont pas conscience», explique Didier Laval.

“Taking the bull by the horns,” Nanopinion will be surveying public opinion in a special way. While it’s not possible to turn people into experts in five minutes, it is possible for people to formulate and express some generalized opinions. (This approach sounds like it’s  based on some ideas that came out of work by Dan Kahan and other researchers at the Yale Law School’s Cultural Cognition Project and which I mentioned in a Dec. 9, 2008 posting. The Cultural Cognition Project researchers suggested that a lot of our opinions arise from preexisting cultural values, which we will apply to new technologies.)

Getting back to the translation, Laval and his team want to convince people that they can participate in public dialogues and surveys concerning nanotechnology even if they don’t have a PhD. in physics.

I gather that during the summer, Nanopinion will be popping up everywhere (in the downtown areas of various cities, at music festivals , and elsewhere) with their multimedia stations and friendly folks encouraging the public to participate in a five minute survey. I wonder if they’ve designed the survey to seem like a game. As for popping up at music festivals, that seems to have been a successful science outreach strategy for Guerilla Science, which made an appearance at the 2011 Glastonbury Music Festival (as per my July 12, 2011 posting).

In any event, this seems to be another public dialogue/engagement/survey project as prophylactic treatment. From the Fleischman article,

Il est peu probable que le NANOPINION puisse à lui tout seul mettre un gouvernement à l’abri d’un scandale de type Amiante ou Vache folle si, un jour, un grave dérapage se produisait dans l’industrie des nanotechnologies. Cependant, le projet témoigne d’une volonté de l’Europe d’être davantage à l’écoute de ses citoyens en matière de recherche scientifique : un nouveau paradigme dans les rapports entre la science et la société.

My translation (such as it is): It is highly unlikely that Nonopinion alone can shelter government from nanotechnology scandals similar to the Amiante (?) and ‘mad cow disease’ scandals. Essentially, the existence of this project, Nanopinion, is proof of Europe’s desire to listen to its citizens regarding their opinions on scientific research and its desire to create a new paradigm for science and its relations to society.

Interestingly, it was approximately three years ago that public dialogues about nanotechnology scheduled in various cities in France were either cancelled or abruptly ended as per my Feb. 28, 2010 posting and my March 10, 2010 posting.

Nanotechnology, risk, science literacy and feelings; Canada’s Science and Technology Week 2009

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The Swiss-based Innovation Society has waded into the discussion about nanoparticles and sunscreens  in the wake of the Friends of the Earth (FOE) report (mentioned here yesterday August 20, 2009).

They point out something I forgot. Despite disagreeing on the “risk  profile,” both the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and FOE advise that nanomaterials should be labelled so that consumers can make informed choices,  (I’m not sure if I’ve seen the phrase risk profile or if I just coined it but I hope it makes sense in this context.) You can read about the Innovation Society’s perspective in their media release on Nanowerk News where they also offer links to the society’s August 2009 newsletter. You have to register to receive it and the form is in German as is the page which houses the public portion of the August 2009 newsletter. So, I’m not sure what language the newsletter is written in although most of what I saw on their site is in English.

As this last week has featured a published study about two women workers who died due to nanoparticle exposure and the FOE report, I’ve been reminded of the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School (mentioned here on this blog last week). One of the conclusions in the paper I read about nanotechnology and risk is that people will make judgments about emerging technologies quickly, with little information, and in line with their feelings (affect), and cultural values. In the experimental investigation they found that increasing scientific literacy (i.e. giving the respondents more factual information about nanotechnology) did nothing or very little to alter someone’s opinion once it was formed.

I can agree with this conclusion as far as it goes. I’ve observed the same process of adhering to an opinion despite any evidence to the contrary in myself and others. I noted yesterday that the FOE report did not mention the EWG findings which, in my opinion, damages their credibility and bears out the conclusions made by the team at the Cultural Cognition Project.

There is one thing which niggles at me. Technologies have emerged before, e.g. electricity. At the time, during the 19th century, it was highly contested (do take a look at Carolyn Marvin’s book, When Old Technologies were New) . Very inflammatory language was used; all kinds of “experts” emerged; scientists engaged in lots of public outreach; there were deaths and injuries; and there were predictions that life on earth would end.  Seems familiar, doesn’t it? Still, electricity has become ubiquitous for much of the world. If cultural values and feelings trump science literacy, how did electricity become ubiquitous?

The Cultural Cognition Project team seemed to suggest in their paper that once opinions have been formed they are largely intractable. If that’s so, regardless of which group’s narrative gains dominance wouldn’t the other group continue to resist? (Note: the Amish opted out from using electricity.) History tells us otherwise.

I am getting ready for my presentation at the International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA) so y9u may find that my posting schedule is interrupted. Happy weekend and here are a few final nuggets,

The Government of Canada, in the person of Rona Ambrose, Minister of Labour, has recognized Quantium Technologies (Edmonton, Alberta) for its innovation in the areas of “linking scientific research to commercialization, jobs and economic growth.” More can be found  in the media release on Nanowerk News.

Nanowerk News has also published a guide to the materials on their site, 10 things you should know about nanotechology. I highly recommend checking this out. Go here.

Canada’s 2009 Science and Technology Week will take place Oct. 16 – 25, 2009 (seems more like 10 days to me). You can check out the currently scheduled events (I’m sure this will be updated) for your province here,

There’s an interesting  story about the first copyright trial in 6th Century Ireland here on Techdirt.

The affect heuristic and risk management principles

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Continuing still with the article by Marchant, Sylvester, and Abbott (Risk Management Principles for Nanotechnology) but first a comment about the report released yesterday by the US National Research Council. I haven’t had a chance to look at it but the report coverage points to agreement between a surprising set of stakeholders to the effect that there is no appropriate governance (regulation) of nanotechnology. The stakeholders include scientists, industry heavyweights such as BASF and Dupont as well as non-for-profit organizations (American Chemical Council and Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies). They didn’t mention any activist groups in the materials I’ve seen but I can’t imagine any disagreement for those quarters.

It’s intriguing that this panel report from the US National Research Council has been released the same week that Nature Nanotechnology has published data from ‘the [sic] Cognition Project’ at Yale Law School warning about possible ‘culture wars’ and Dietram Scheufele’s latest findings about the impact religion might have on the adoption of nanotechnology. It’s possible that someone is masterminding all of this but I think there’s a more likely scenario. Most of the people of the involved know each other because there’s a loose network. They are concerned about the potential for problems and when they talk to each other they find out about each other’s projects and encourage them. At some point they may have decided that it would be a good tactic to release reports and publish in Nature Nanotechnology at roughly the same time. Consequently, they got lucky and the various media cooperated unknowingly with this impromptu plan. Conversely, nobody talked to anyone about these various projects and they got lucky. What I don’t believe is that they developed some master plan and carried it out.

On to heuristics. As I understand the word, it means guidelines (more or less). In this paper, the authors discuss two specific heuristics that relate to risk perception. (If you’re going to manage risk, you need to understand how it’s perceived.)

Where nanotechnology is concerned, ‘Affect” is considered to be an important heuristic when examining the public’s perception of risk. (Affect is how you feel about something.) Here’s something interesting from the paper,

… numerous studies have shown that where individuals believe a technology has high benefits, they automatically believe its risks are low. This negative correlation has been shown to affect both lay and expert opinions, and is robust even in the face of countervailing evidence. … In short, how individuals feel about a particular stimulus directs how they perceive its dangers or benefits. p. 48

What fascinates me is that your knowledge about the topic be it expert or amateur is still heavily affected by whether or not you believe the technology is beneficial even when evidence suggests that the dangers are huge.

There’s more about ‘affect’ in the article, if you’re interested, get the journal Nanoethics, 2008, vol. 2, pp. 43-60. Meanwhile, there’s another heuristic that the authors are using to build their case for a new risk management principle. The other heuristic is ‘Availability’ and more about that tomorrow.

The precautionary principle and a bit about the ‘culture wars’

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I was sick for a while there but now I’m back. The article I’ve been talking about is “Risk Management Principles for Nanotechnology” by Gary E. Marchant, Douglas J. Sylvester and Kenneth W. Abbott. The precautionary principle according to the article ‘is often summarized by the phrase ‘better safe than sorry’.” In other words, if there’s a possibility that something bad will happen, don’t do it. As you might expect this seems like a problematic principle to implement. Do you sit around imagining disaster scenarios or do you tell yourself everything will be fine? How do you determine the level of possible risk?

One of the reasons I was so interested in the event that the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies had organized with L’Oreal (cosmetics firm) was that the company representative would be discussing how they were implementing the precautionary principle when developing and selling their nanotechnology-based cosmetics. Unfortunately, that event has yet to be rescheduled.

The subject of risk is quite topical right now due to an article from the folks at Yale Law School’s Cognition Project (in cooperation with the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies) that’s just been published in Nature Nanotechnology and which apparently predicts ‘culture wars’. (I read an earlier version of the work online and cited it in a presentation for the 2008 Cascadia Nanotechnology Symposium.) The major thrust of the work at Yale was that people will consider the benefits and risks of an emerging technology (in this case, nanotechnology) according to their cultural values. They used anthropologist Mary Douglas’s two cross-cutting dimensions of culture to explain what they mean by culture. On one axis you have hierarchy/egalitarianism and on the other axis you have individualism/egalitarianism. One of the findings in the paper is that it doesn’t matter how much information you receive (this relates to the notion of science literacy where if you educate people about the technology they will come to accept it and its attendant risks) since your opinion of the technology is more strongly influenced by your cultural values as they are measured on those two axes. I think at least some of this work is a response to the city of Berkeley’s law regulating nanotechnology research. The legislation was passed unusually quickly and, I believe, it was the first such legislation in the US.

Concurrently published in Nature Nanotechnology with the ‘culture wars’ article is an article by Dietram Scheufele where he discusses how ‘religion’ or ‘values’ have an impact on attitudes towards nanotechnology. I think this article is based on some of the material he presented last year at the 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.