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“Broader Impacts” or “Responsible Research and Innovation”? A Comparison of Two Criteria for Funding Research in Science and Engineering

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Abstract

Our subject is how the experience of Americans with a certain funding criterion, “broader impacts” (and some similar criteria) may help in efforts to turn the European concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) into a useful guide to funding Europe’s scientific and technical research. We believe this comparison may also be as enlightening for Americans concerned with revising research policy. We have organized our report around René Von Schomberg’s definition of RRI, since it seems both to cover what the European research group to which we belong is interested in and to be the only widely accepted definition of RRI. According to Von Schomberg, RRI: “… is a transparent, interactive process by which societal actors and innovators become mutually responsive to each other with a view to the (ethical) acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of the innovation process and its marketable products (in order to allow a proper embedding of scientific and technological advances in our society).” While RRI seeks fundamental changes in the way research is conducted, Broader Impacts is more concerned with more peripheral aspects of research: widening participation of disadvantaged groups, recruiting the next generation of scientists, increasing the speed with which results are used, and so on. Nevertheless, an examination of the broadening of funding criteria over the last four decades suggests that National Science Foundation has been moving in the direction of RRI.

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Notes

  1. The only published alternative to this definition seems to be:

    Responsible Research and Innovation refers to ways of proceeding in Research and Innovation that allow those who initiate and are involved in the processes of research and innovation at an early stage (A) to obtain relevant knowledge on the consequences of the outcomes of their actions and on the range of options open to them and (B) to effectively evaluate both outcomes and options in terms of moral values (including, but not limited to wellbeing, justice, equality, privacy, autonomy, safety, security, sustainability, accountability, democracy and efficiency) and (C) to use these considerations (under A and B) as functional requirements for design and development of new research, products and services. (Directorate-General 2013, 55–56)

    We think the Directorate-General definition differs little in substance from Von Schomberg’s shorter and simpler version (though it does avoid some of the problems we find in Von Schomberg’s).

  2. Actually, this is not quite right—or is quite right only given a certain understanding of “science”. For example, NSF does not typically fund research in criminal justice science, library science (except digital libraries), or animal husbandry, but does fund work in philosophy and history of science.

  3. This amount, though large, is small compared to the overall federal spending on research. NIH alone spends about $30 billion a year on medical research (NIH 2012).

  4. The data appear in Appendix C of NSF (2011), a report of over 300 pages (providing many insights into the entire process of re-formulating the broader-impacts criterion).

  5. The first version of the proposed revised merit criterion (NSF 2011, 264) provided the following information about “national goals”:

    Collectively, NSF projects should help to advance a broad set of important national goals, including:

    • Increased economic competitiveness of the United States.

    • Development of a globally competitive STEM workforce.

    • Increased participation of women, persons with disabilities, and underrepresented minorities in STEM.

    • Increased partnerships between academia and industry.

    • Improved pre-K–12 STEM education and teacher development.

    • Improved undergraduate STEM education.

    • Increased public scientific literacy and public engagement with science and technology.

    • Increased national security.

    • Enhanced infrastructure for research and education, including facilities, instrumentation, networks and partnerships.

    Note that even this long list is not exhaustive. The nation’s goals simply “include” these. Note too that NSF projects are to advance these goals “collectively”. There is no requirement that any particular project advance any of these goals. The list is much the same as the “goals” in the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (H.R. 5116), Sec. 526.

  6. The substitution of “societal” for “national” seems to have been a way to provide more free-play in the choice of impacts to pursue (since there was no Congressional definition of “societal goals” as there was of “national goals”). For those with an ear for language, the question might arise: Why “societal” rather than the shorter and older “social”? There is no official answer. The best guess is that “societal” suggests “society” while “social” also suggests “socialize”, “sociable”, “socialism”, and other ideas slightly less appropriate.

  7. Almost identical language appears in NSF (2013), Chapter II.C.2.d (the Guide to those proposing research). This is a definition only in the sense that it sets some limits on what counts as broader impact (contribution to societal goals by the research itself or some auxiliary activities).

  8. http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/i-corps/program.jsp (accessed May 1, 2013). This is one of many efforts to build on the Bayh–Dole Act of 1980 (a.k.a. Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act). Codified as 35 U.S.C. § 200–212, and implemented by 37 C.F.R. 401, that legislation permits a university, small business, or non-profit institution to pursue ownership of a federally funded invention (rather than, as had been the practice, letting it fall into the public domain). The idea was that private ownership would speed the movement of scientific advance into practical application. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act (accessed April 24, 2013).

  9. The point here is not that EPRS could not have been a marketable product in a different environment—as Google Health was supposed to be—but that, even though it was in fact not developed as a marketable product (but as something the public health system would use), it served Von Schomberg well, allowing him to make all the points he wished concerning RRI. It did not have to be a markable produce to elucidate RRI.

  10. Interestingly, NSF now uses “products” to include “publications, data sets, software, patents, and copyrights” [NSF 2013, B.2.i(c)]. Since “publications” generally appear in journals or as books that publishers market, even publications would seem to count as “marketable products” (for NSF). So (in the American context at least), not only does “marketable products” leave out products Von Schomberg should include in RRI (those that are useful but not marketable) but also to include some products he may not intend (those marketable products that simply consist in scientific publications). “Product” is another term in need of clarification if it is to be used more narrowly than NSF does.

  11. We added “other” to Von Schomberg’s “societal actors” because researchers and innovators are, of course, societal actors too. Even “pure science” is a societal activity.

  12. I am assuming that among the reasons to desire RRI is to avoid the harms scientific and technical advances might impose, such as the loss of privacy or the destruction of the environment. Of course, some research, especially military research, is meant to do harm (to some people). I ignore such research here because it does not seem to be within the bounds of RRI—just a military research is not within NSF’s mandate. RRI is, it seems, about certain research compartments, not all. There is a need for the Europeans to be much more explicit about what sorts of research and innovation is outside the bounds of RRI.

  13. The NSB consists of the NSF director and twenty-four ordinary members appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. The NSB meets six times a year to establish NSF’s overall policies within the framework of applicable national policies set by the President and Congress. The Board also serves as an independent policy advisory body to the President and Congress on science and engineering research and education and has a statutory obligation to “render to the President and to the Congress reports on specific, individual policy matters related to science and engineering and education in science engineering, as the Board, the President, or the Congress determines the need for such reports,” and to “render to the President and the Congress no later than January 15 of each even numbered year, a report on indicators of the state of science and engineering in the United States.” [42 U.S.C. Section 1863, Sec.4.(j)(1–2)] The NSF’s director is also responsible for administration, planning, budgeting, and day-to-day operations of the foundation.

  14. Indeed, having had more than three decades of experience with academic-industry partnerships, Americans have become cautious about allowing partnerships to be too close. See, for example, Davis (1991), Krimsky (2004), or Institutes (2009). NSF now requires academic institutions to have conflict of interest policies to keep university-industry relations from becoming too close (NSF 2013, 6–7). RRI seems to risk similar problems.

  15. There was some sense of that possibility, however. Informal discussions with several of the participants specializing in “outreach” revealed that they often helped to shape the research being proposed as part of helping researchers develop a satisfactory statement of broader impacts. For example, a researcher who (upon the outreach specialist’s suggestion) included high school students among those collecting water samples for him could count the students’ increased interest in science as a potential broader impact of the proposed research.

  16. One exception to this general separation of research and the public is what has come to be known as “citizen science”, that is, projects that recruit members of the public to help gather research data. So, for example, a recent NSF-funded project at Cornell University included volunteers living in areas affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The volunteers surveyed birds on beaches and in marshes along the Gulf coast. They shared what they learned through a website that automatically built interactive maps showing locations of reported birds in relation to current and forecast oil-slick locations, allowing for quick response when conservation was needed (NSF 2010).

  17. Members of an advisory council are chosen by the respective institute or center and approved by the Department of Health and Human Services. For certain committees, members are appointed by the President of the United States.

  18. For human subjects in research, the relevant laws are 45 CFR Part 46 (HHS) and 45 CFR Part 690 (NSF) Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects; for animals, 7 USC. 2131 et seq., 9 CFR 1.1–4.11.

  19. The terms “translative research” and “translational science” are (more or less) equivalent to “translational research”.

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Acknowledgments

This article was written with support from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme grant number 321400. Thanks to Doris Schroeder and two of this journal’s reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

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  1. Humanities Department, Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology, 5300 S. South Shore Drive #57, Chicago, IL, 60615, USA

    Michael Davis

  2. Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, HUB 204, 3241 S. Federal Street, Chicago, IL, 60616, USA

    Kelly Laas

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Correspondence to Michael Davis.

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Davis, M., Laas, K. “Broader Impacts” or “Responsible Research and Innovation”? A Comparison of Two Criteria for Funding Research in Science and Engineering. Sci Eng Ethics 20, 963–983 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-013-9480-1

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