Abstract
Significant efforts have been made to define ethical responsibilities for professionals engaged in nanotechnology innovation. Rosalyn Berne delineated three ethical dimensions of nanotechnological innovation: non-negotiable concerns, negotiable socio-cultural claims, and tacitly ingrained norms. Braden Allenby demarcated three levels of responsibility: the individual, professional societies (e.g. engineering codes), and the macro-ethical. This article will explore how these definitions of responsibility map onto practitioners’ understanding of their responsibilities and the responsibilities of others using the nanotechnology innovation community of the greater Phoenix area, which includes academic researchers, investors, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, insurers, attorneys, buyers, and media. To do this we develop a three-by-three matrix that combines Berne’s three dimensions and Allenby’s three levels. We then categorize the ethical responsibilities expressed by forty-five practitioners in semi-structured interviews using these published dimensions and levels. Two questions guide the research: (i) what responsibilities do actors express as theirs and/or assign to other actors and; (ii) can those responsibilities be mapped to the presented ethical frameworks? We found that most of the responsibilities outlined by our respondents concentrate at the professional society + non-negotiable and professional + negotiable intersections. The study moves from a philosophical exploration of ethics to an empirical analysis, exploring strengths, weaknesses, and gaps in the existing nanotechnology innovation network. This opens the door for new practitioners to be introduced in an effort to address responsibilities that are not currently recognized.
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Notes
Ethics in practice is an expression of ethical stances (e.g. the perspectives of scientists). Ethics in practice and other variations of this term are intended to hold the same meaning throughout.
In this article, actors are those people directly or indirectly involved in nanotechnology innovation processes. The term actors is broad enough to encompass a community, but not so broad as to include every man, woman and child in the geographic region. All participants are actors in the nanotechnology innovation community.
Participants were given an unlabeled innovation framework and asked to identify who did what from the ‘start’ of the innovation to the ‘end’. Participants were encouraged to rebut the presumption that innovation has a start or end and encouraged to dismiss the provided framework. Participants defined, in their own words, the innovation process first theoretically and then (if time permitted) a specific case in which they had discrete knowledge.
Interviews are cited in text when direct quotes are attributed to individuals. Participants were grouped into categories and coded to ensure anonymity, while allowing the research team to cite interviews in text at the reference section.
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Acknowledgements
This research was undertaken with support through the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU), funded by the National Science Foundation (Award No. 0937591). The findings and observations are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. All human subjects research was performed in accordance with the Arizona State University – Institutional Review Board (ASU-IRB). The authors would like to thank Dr. Guston and Dr. Wiek for providing the space for this research and thank the two anonymous reviewers – both of whom provided poignant feedback.
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Foley, R.W., Bennett, I. & Wetmore, J.M. Practitioners’ Views on Responsibility: Applying Nanoethics. Nanoethics 6, 231–241 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-012-0154-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-012-0154-2