After coming across a mention of John Rawls in a July 11, 2010 posting by Richard Jones (Soft Machines blog) and his (Rawls’) notions about how people and groups with diverse interests can come to agreements on social norms, I wondered why I hadn’t heard of Rawls before and how his thinking might apply to nanotechnology regulatory frameworks.
Assuming I might not be alone in my ignorance of Rawls’ work, here’s a brief description from a Wikipedia essay,
John Bordley Rawls (February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. … His magnum opus, A Theory of Justice (1971), is now regarded as “one of the primary texts in political philosophy.”[1] His work in political philosophy, dubbed Rawlsianism,[2] takes as its starting point the argument that “most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree to from a fair position.”[1]
(The footnote details can be found by following the essay link.) I think the idea of people being able to come to agreements when they operate from a fair position is both interesting and seems to be borne out by a recent study in the US that Steffen Foss Hansen has recently published in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research. Michael Berger at Nanowerk has written an in depth article about the study and multicriteria mapping, the technique used to measure and evaluate interviewees’ positions on nanotechnology regulatory frameworks. From the Berger article,
Multicriteria Mapping [MCM] is a computer-based decision analysis technique that provides a way of appraising a series of different potential ways forward on a complex and controversial policy problem. Like other multicriteria approaches, it involves developing a set of criteria, evaluating the performance of each option under each criterion, and weighting each criterion according to its relative importance.
Hansen interviewed 26 stakeholders, including academics, public civil servants, corporate lawyers, [public interest groups,] and representatives from worker unions, industrial companies, and trade association.
One aspect of this research that I thought particularly useful is that the interviews are structured dynamically. From the study,
Once the criteria had been defined, the interviewee was asked to evaluate the relative performance of the different policy options on a numerical scale (0–100) under each of the criteria one-by-one. Zero representing the worst relative performance and a 100 the best. In order to allow for uncertainty in the estimation MCM allows the interviewee to give a range (e.g., 20–30) and to make worst- and best-case assumptions. The lowest values assigned to an option would then reflect the option considered under worst case assumptions whereas the highest would reflect the same option considered under best-case assumptions. Throughout this scoring process the interviewee was asked to explain the value or range assigned to options and assumptions made. One interview had to be terminated at this stage of the interview as the participant realized that he/she had yet to develop a formalized opinion on the most preferred options. Others expressed some dislike with having to put a numerical estimate on something which they normally only discuss in qualitative terms. Others again found it challenging to have to look at all the options through all their criteria scoring and explaining the scoring of up to 72 combinations of policy options and criteria. Normally they would not have to explain their position in such depth. … MCM is an iterative process, so interviewees were free to return to review earlier steps of the process at any stage of the interview. (Journal of Nanoparticle Research, vol. 12, p. 1963)
Bravo to the interviewees for going through a demanding process and putting their opinions to the test. Also, I understood from reading the study that MCM captures both quantitative (as the preceding excerpt shows) and qualitative data, an approach I’ve always favoured.
Berger’s article goes on to discuss the results from the study,
“Adopting an incremental approach and implementing a new regulatory framework have been evaluated as the best options whereas a complete ban and no additional regulation of nanotechnology were the least favorable” Hansen explains the key findings to Nanowerk.
Participants described their idea of an ‘incremental approach’ as “…launching an incremental process using existing legislative structures—e.g., dangerous substances legislation, classification and labeling, cosmetic legislation, etc.—to the maximum, revisiting them, and, when appropriate only, amending them…” and a ‘new regulatory framework’ as “…launching a comprehensive, in-depth regulatory process specific to nanotechnologies that aims at developing an entirely new legislative framework that tries to take all the widely different nanomaterials and applications into consideration.”
Hansen notes that comparing the ranking of the various options by the stakeholder groups reveals that an incremental approach was ranked highest by a majority of the various stakeholder groups e.g. civil servants, public interest groups, industrial company representatives and corporate lawyers.
Who would have thought that the most extreme ends of opinion as represented by public interest groups that usually favour the precautionary principle and industrial company representatives who argue in favour of little or voluntary regulation could agree on an incremental approach? I suppose it gets back to Rawls and his notion of coming to an agreement from “a fair position.”
More work needs to be done, it’s a single study, only 26 interviews took place, the MCM is a snapshot of a moment in time and may no longer reflect the interviewee’s personal opinions, and the regulatory situation in the US has changed since these interviews took place. Still, with all these caveats, and I’m sure there are others, the study offers encouraging news about diverse groups being able to come to an agreement on the subject of nanotechnology regulatory frameworks.