Towards principled Responsible Research and Innovation: employing the Difference Principle in funding decisions

Abstract

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) has emerged as a science policy framework that attempts to import broad social values into technological innovation processes whilst supporting institutional decision-making under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity. When looking at RRI from a ‘principled’ perspective, we consider responsibility and justice to be important cornerstones of the framework. The main aim of this article is to suggest a method of realising these principles through the application of a limited Rawlsian Difference Principle in the distribution of public funds for research and innovation.

Acknowledgements

This article was written with the support from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme grant number 321400. Thanks also to helpful comments from delegates of the RRI Unbound Conference at Twente University; the University of Melbourne CAPPE Research Seminar; Julie Cook Lucas, Armin Schmidt; Roger Chennells and four anonymous referees.

ORCID

Doris Schroeder http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3633-2758

Notes on contributors

Professor Doris Schroeder, whose background is in philosophy, politics and economics, is Director of the Centre for Professional Ethics at the University of Central Lancashire UK, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Uclan Cyprus and Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), Charles Sturt University Canberra, Australia. Professor Schroeder has published and led large international research projects on benefit sharing, responsible research and innovation and global research ethics. Her conceptual work in bioethics focuses mostly on the human right to access to health care, dignity and vulnerability.

Dr Miltos Ladikas, whose background is in social psychology and ethics, holds senior research fellowship positions at the Centre for Professional Ethics at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, and at the Institute of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. Dr Ladikas has coordinated a number of international projects and published in the areas of science and technology policy, TA, ethics of scientific developments, public perceptions in science and technology, genetically modified foods and access to pharmaceuticals.

Notes

1. We are using an interpretation of von Schomberg's sustainability principle that was developed by Coles et al. (2014b).

2. The principles and responsibilities set out in the 2010 Singapore Statement on Research Integrity represent the first international effort to encourage the development of unified policies, guidelines and codes of conduct, with the long-range goal of fostering greater integrity in research worldwide. The Statement is the product of the collective effort and insights of 340 individuals from 51 countries. These included researchers, funders, representatives of research institutions (universities and research institutes) and research publishers (http://www.singaporestatement.org/).

3. For a useful overview of the relevance of justice criteria to science policy, see Cozzens (2007).

4. Rawls (1999, 68) does prohibit excessive inequalities in return for meagre benefits to the least advantaged. He says ‘A scheme is unjust when the higher expectations … are excessive'. Expectations in this context are the same as prospects or wealth and opportunities to be achieved through a particular societal set-up. As this limitation is not relevant to the case that we shall apply the principle to (the distribution of research funds, all other things being equal), we are not going to provide details on this limiting scenario.

5. See Table 1.

6. Smart electricity metres were to be installed widely as part of a Dutch energy reduction plan, but after serious privacy concerns were raised by civil society organisations, the installation is currently voluntary.

7. At the time of writing, the funding situation for translational research in health under Horizon 2020 (2014–2020), the current EU funding program, is not yet clear.

8. Of course, the limited Difference Principle could be used to rank proposals of any numbers.

9. Research funding is a subset of science-policy institutions.