Responsible research and innovation as a travesty of technology assessment?

ABSTRACT

The relation between technology assessment (TA) and responsible research and innovation (RRI) is a very topical (and controversial) issue, as TA is clearly enveloped in broader science, technology and innovation (STI) processes, such as the EU-wide shift towards RRI. In this short response to van Lente et al.’s [Van Lente, Harro, Tsjalling Swierstra, and Pierre-Benoît Joly. 2017. “Responsible Innovation as a Critique of Technology Assessment.” Journal of Responsible Innovation] essay, I first stress that this contribution has several merits; for example, it points to pervasive challenges for TA communities, such as the issue of including normative concerns when assessing innovations, it opens these challenges to debate, without shying away from engaging TA communities. However, I disagree with the authors’ claim that RRI would be ‘a next step of TA’ or even a ‘form of TA’. In my essay, I explain why I believe RRI is different from TA and why, rather than a critique of TA, RRI could instead lead to a travesty of TA, threatening the vitality and the uniqueness of TA institutions in the long-term. Under the spell of RRI, TA risks being reduced to a role of mere provider of ex-ante impact assessments. I conclude that following the money attached to RRI has a price that TA institutions should carefully, critically and reflexively consider before they pay.

KEYWORDS:

• Technology assessment
• responsible research and innovation
• politics of TA

Acknowledgements

The author wants to express his gratitude to his colleagues Benedikt Rosskamp, François Thoreau and Michiel van Oudheusden for their constructive comments on preliminary versions of this essay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Pierre Delvenne, Research Associate of the Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) and Associate Director of the SPIRAL Research Centre at the University of Liège, Belgium, where he coordinates the Research Unit in Science, Technology and Society.

Notes

1. For the sake of clarity, I want to mention that I am working in the field of science and technology studies (STS), with an active participation in several STS associations. At the same time, I have been engaged in technology assessment activities in the last 10 years (as part of PhD, postdoctoral or collaborative research at the EU level, e.g. in the PACITA project). I thus also consider myself a TA practitioner and member of the TA community at large. Lastly, the research centre I am co-directing is an Associate Member of the European Parliamentary Technology Assessment (EPTA) network.

2. The terms ‘responsible innovation’ or ‘responsible research and innovation’ have a history stretching back 15 years or so and multiple roots in the United States and Europe (Owen, Macnaghten, and Stilgoe 2012, 751; Van Oudheusden 2014). However, it is in Europe, and especially at the European Commission policy level, that the terms gained the more visibility and traction (Owen, Macnaghten, and Stilgoe 2012). For this reason, and also because the Parliamentary Technology Assessment offices and networks are mostly located in Europe, this essay will take Europe as its primary focus.

3. PACITA was a four-year (2011–2015) EU-financed project under 7th Framework Programme aimed at increasing the capacity and enhancing the institutional foundation for knowledge-based policy-making on issues involving science, technology and innovation, mainly based upon the diversity of practices in Parliamentary Technology Assessment (PTA). See www.pacitaproject.eu.

4. Examples include the CIVISTI method, combining future-oriented discussions of national citizens panels and stakeholder and expert participation (www.civisti.org), or the World Wide Views method, which has been used at the European and global levels to organize citizens consultations on policy issues (www.wwviews.org).

5. While others are less certain as to whether RRI will indeed evolve at the policy level into a distinct let alone a lasting form (e.g. Rip 2016), such a state of affairs does not lessen in my mind potential concerns that RRI may nevertheless exert an undue influence on TA funding, TA practices, or both.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fonds De La Recherche Scientifique – FNRS.