Opening up nanotechnology dialogue with the publics: Risk communication or ‘upstream engagement’?

Abstract

Public participation is becoming increasingly popular with emerging health technologies, such as nanotechnologies, which may pose novel ethical, social or risk issues in the future. Nanotechnologies represent an important test case for so-called ‘upstream’ engagement: that is public participation before significant research and development has taken place and before establishment of firm public attitudes or social representations about an issue. We discuss the origins of this development in the parallel intellectual traditions of risk communication and science and technology studies, respectively. We argue that such engagement does not simply involve moving the same forms of analytic deliberative process that have been used in the past to an earlier time, but it requires engaging in a new set of questions with the publics. Reflecting upon evidence from NanoJury UK, the first citizens jury on nanotechnology in the UK, we argue that processes of upstream engagement require moving beyond conventional approaches to discussing ‘risks’ found in much public dialogue and traditional forms of risk communication, to open up debate about values and visions for the future.

Keywords:

• Nanotechnologies
• upstream engagement
• NanoJury UK risk communication

Acknowledgements

This study was funded through grants from the Leverhulme Trust to the Program on Understanding Risk, the U.S. National Science Foundation (Cooperative Agreement No. 0531184) to the Centre for Nanotechnology in Society, University of California, Santa Barbara, and through the School of Psychology, Cardiff University. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The authors thank everyone involved in NanoJury UK. Finally, the authors wish to thank the anonymous referees, Ruth Duncang, Doug Parr, Judith Petts, and the issue editors for valuable comments.

Notes

1 In using the plural term nanotechnologies throughout, we are following the precedent set by the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering (RS/RAE 2004). They argue that what is currently classified as nanotechnology encompasses such a wide range of materials, processes and potential products/outcomes that to make a singular categorisation is misleading.

2 Stated in this way, the notion of scientific citizenship is in fact compatible with emerging risk communication research which stresses constructed preferences and decision analysis (see Pidgeon and Gregory 2004), emphasising in particular the analytic-deliberative processes as ways of supporting lay people to make more informed judgements about risk.

3 The question of whether a crisis of trust in science actually existed at this point in time is debatable. At the level of general beliefs about the contribution of science and technology to society, public attitudes have remained highly favourable in the UK (see OST/Wellcome 2000, Poortinga and Pidgeon 2003, MORI 2005). Where concerns are expressed it is with respect to much more specific controversial issues (radioactive waste, GM food, the MMR vaccine).

4 It is noteworthy that the linear implication of the ‘upstream’ metaphor (upstream versus downstream) has not escaped those who promote ‘upstream engagement’. Despite the possibility that use of the metaphor conceals the existence of a multiplicity of potential paths for science and technology development the metaphor continues to gain currency.

5 The interpretation of risk perceptions data is fraught with difficulties where baseline awareness of an issue is low. It is likely that a number of the respondents who believed the technology would prove beneficial were responding to some variant of the generic category ‘new technology’ (where we know that attitudes are very favourable) rather than to nanotechnology per se.

6 We should not underestimate the ability of people to distinguish between ostensibly similar risk issues. Stigmatisation of jet aviation as a whole did not occur in the 1960s as a result of the accidents to the early British Comet aircraft (although the Comet itself did suffer this fate). Equally, the many acknowledged health benefits to flow from human biotechnology, and accordingly the generally more positive public attitudes to such ‘red’ biotechnology, did not prevent intense debates over agricultural (green) biotechnology from occurring.

7 The Jury publicly released their recommendations in September 2005. However, the process is seen as on-going as a number of the jurors continue to be involved in tracking post-jury developments in this field.

8 It was decided that ‘reflection’ was a more useful term for describing our role in facilitating learning, rather than ‘evaluation’ which brought with it connotations of passing judgment. We conducted our ‘reflection’ though participant observation of the NanoJury UK sessions in June and July 2005, and through further contact with jurors. We undertook brief interviews with jurors on the first two nights of the NanoJury to ascertain their expectations of the jury process. On the final evening of the jury, a 30-min focus group was undertaken in order to elicit jurors' views on the most successful aspects of the jury, aspects that they thought could have been improved, and their own criteria for judging the success of the jury. From this discussion some qualitative questions were constructed and sent out to all jury members to elicit further feedback on their thoughts on the jury and their experiences.

9 Both the geographical area selected for situating the jury and the two jury format were in part influenced by the operating guidelines of the funders that the facilitation team worked within.

10 The authors are grateful to Judith Petts for bringing this important critique to their attention.

11 Those which included two distinct recommendations were counted as two recommendations even though they were labelled in the NanoJury UK provisional recommendations under one heading, for example see the ‘Health 1’ recommendations in this article.

12 These 13 general recommendations also include one on ‘communication with the next generation’ not specially labelled as ‘general’.

13 These formed recommendations 10, 12(iii) and 4, respectively, in the Royal Society study (see RS/RAE 2004: 85 – 86).

14 Restricting and decontextualising public debates is unfortunately common practice. This can happen through applying a modernist framework, in which the utilisation of naturised post-industrial worldviews results in restricting the processes and acceptable inputs, for example marginalising holistic perspectives, and particularly through scientization, in which complex social, ethical, spiritual and physical issues are reduced to technical details, see for example Rogers-Hayden and Hindmarsh 2002, Walls et al.2005, Rogers-Hayden and Jones, 2007).