Responsibility and nanotechnology

Abstract

In this paper we argue that the concept and practice of responsibility is being transformed within science and engineering. It tells the story of attempts by nanotechnologists to make responsibility ‘do-able’ and calculable in a setting where the established language and tools of risk and risk analysis are seen as inadequate. The research is based on ethnographic participant-observation at the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) at Rice University in Texas, during the period 2003 to 2007, including the controversies and public discussions it was engaged in and the creation of the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON). CBEN began as a project to study ‘applications’ of nanotechnology to environmental and biological systems, but turned immediately to the study of ‘implications’ to biology and environment. We argue here that the notion of ‘implications’ and the language of risk employed early on addressed two separate but entangled ideas: the risks that nanomaterials pose to biology and environment, and the risks that research on this area poses to the health of nanotechnology itself. Practitioners at CBEN sought ways to accept responsibility both as scientists with a duty to protect science (from the public, from defunding, from ‘backlash’) and as citizens with a responsibility to protect the environment and biology through scientific research. Ultimately, the language of risk has failed, and in its place ideas about responsibility, prudence, and accountability for the future have emerged, along with new questions about the proper venues and ‘modes of veridiction’ by which claims about safety or responsibility might be scientifically adjudicated.