The great impacts Houdini

ABSTRACT

I argue that the broader impacts conversation in research evaluation is designed to look like it addresses difficult questions about progress and the good life, whereas in fact it avoids them. In so doing, this discourse does not stay neutral on these questions. Rather, it supplies a default, unexamined answer. The use of normative anchors, or principles, in talk about Responsible Research and Innovation is laudable but inadequate. The problem is, though, that any adequate conversation would seem hopelessly antiquated if not hostile to the assumed goodness of technoscience.

KEYWORDS:

• Broader impacts
• research evaluation
• good life
• well-being

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Adam Briggle is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [grant number 1445121].