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From 2013.igem.org

As scientists it is not easy to think about our work in an ethic way, likewise, philosophers may find problems when confronted with the exact sciences. That is why we decided to collaborate with members of the KU Leuven [http://hiw.kuleuven.be/eng/ institute of philosophy]. This way they could guide us in making ethical decisions and we could guide them in learning what comprises synthetic biology.

Music taste and the ethics of synthetic biology

We, Michiel Poorthuis and Sam de Vlieger are the philosophy students dealing with the ethical aspect of the iGEM project of the KU Leuven team. In this first blog we decided to reflect on the question how one ethically evaluates a scientific project as such. How can we, as philosophy students, provide a judgment on a scientific project, whose workings and consequences, too a large degree, escape our understanding?

What is the role of ethics in scientific innovation anyway? From the outside, it seems that much (if not all) scientific progress is not really guided by ethical evaluations at all. Neither did ethics stop the development of the atomic bomb, nor did it hamper the development of the software that enables the U.S. Government (and others) to spy on their citizens. Closer to home, recent protests against a research program in which the KU Leuven cooperates with Israël Aerospace Industries (a company that makes drones that were responsible for the bombing of Gaza), was not able to create much turmoil. It seems that religious or ethical objections (whether justified or not) may function as a break on the ever progressing science, but stopping it or changing its direction fundamentally seems impossible. In order to gain an understanding of the relation between our role as ethicist and scientific research, we will dwell a bit on what ethics actually is. Ethics, as most people know, has to do with good and bad. An ethical judgment is a normative judgment, i.e., it is an evaluation of some person, action or process. Whereas one can easily provide a judgment on something that one is familiar with, it is harder to do so in relation to something that one has not yet previously encountered (such as synthetic biology).

Something, compared to synthetic biology, that we are more familiar with, and know how to evaluate, is music. At first sight this might look a little far fetched, but remember that both ethics and aesthetics are about value judgments, the former about good and bad, the latter about beauty and ugliness. When we listen to music, we know whether we like it or not. Sometimes we can immediately say "this song is beautiful" and other times it might take some time to develop one's taste and to be able to appreciate a new song.

The way we judge music is by our taste. Michiel might think that the piano piece "Gute Nacht" by Shubert is beautiful while, at the same time, Sam absolutely hates this song and prefers “Alors On Dance” by Stromae. Even after long nights of discussing and studying the piece, we might not reach an agreement; our tastes simply differ. The fact that Michiel likes this piece and Sam dislikes it, does seem to say anything about the music itself. When Sam says that he dislikes the piece, he is not talking about an objective quality of the piece, but about his relation to it. It seems that referring to taste/feeling is not going to help us evaluate of the iGEM project of the KU Leuven, if we want to reach beyond our personal relation to the project. We can stop here and say that one cannot evaluate a scientific process, or one can search for certain feelings or values that are shared among people and one the basis of which one is able to reach an agreement that goes beyond our subjective feelings. What we will try to do is look at philosophers who propose some values that, according to them, go beyond a merely subjective evaluation and see how they apply to the scientific project of KU Leuven iGEM team.

The normative evaluation tends to judge the outcomes of a scientific process (Is the product potentially harmfull, or is it able to cure a great number of people?). Next to this normative evaluation, we will try to gain a deeper insight into the role ethical evaluations of the teammembers themselves. What do they think are important values? How do their values relate to the work they are doing in the lab? Instead of judging what they are doing, we would like to bring forward how ethical evaluations themselves play a role in a scientific process. More about this, next time.

Finished Science or Science in Action

As philosophers, that is, outsiders concerning the scientific work of synthetic biologists, we are privileged to be a part of the iGEM team so we gain an understanding in how the scientific process functions. Normally outsiders (non-scientists) only perceive the finished products or some controversy that manages to reach popular media. This time, we are given a chance to see how decisions are taken and trajectories are chosen before the controversy stirs up, or before the final goal is achieved.

What makes this perspective interesting is that it shifts the focus from facts of science to human decisions. Like Bruno Latour, in his book "Science in Action," we will be taking a look through the back door of "science in the making," instead of the looking at the facts of "ready made science." Latour explains how science is a process of opening and closing black boxes. A black box is a fact of ready made science. For example the helix structure of DNA as we know it today is such a black box. This does not mean that we do not know what is in it, but that we do not have to contest the idea of the helix structure of DNA every time we work with it. However, if we wish to contest someone who is saying that DNA has in fact a different structure, we will have open the black box and proof that in fact the helix structure is right. What do you get when you open a black box? According to Latour, you can have more black boxes, or facts, that were previously established through scientific experiments.

Latour is claiming that to truly understand science one should look at how science constructs these black boxes. That is, how does science establish facts? How are the experiments set up? What is the role of different laboratories? What role do the production of papers play? What is the role of the scientist in the decision taking processes? Etc. Latour does not specifically focus on the role of ethical evaluations in "science in the making." With this we mean, how the attitudes of scientists concerning ethical or moral issues play a part in the scientific process. For example, what are the ethical evaluations of scientists investigating current alternatives for our oil consumption? Or why is the KU Leuven iGEM-team focusing on a bacteria that attracts ladybugs in order to protect plants?

We do not want to state beforehand that ethical considerations play a major role. We don't know. Maybe they only play a very minor role, or none at all. By investigating the role of ethics in science we want to break with the image of the scientists stubbornly working to advance SCIENCE and to look at the human beings that are contributing to the field of science with their own personal motivations, attitudes and beliefs.