Taking Responsible Innovation to China: The Dalian Port Development Case

Responsible innovation (RI) is playing a progressively significant role in the developed countries of Europe and North America, but is not as often used as a framework for analysis in developing countries. This article describes how what we term latent or implicit RI was introduced to a large-scale technological project in China: the expansion of the deep-sea port in Dalian. This analysis first reviews the historical development of the port and summarizes the Chinese context since the Reform and Opening that began in the late 1970s. It provides a brief case study of a particular emergency containment pool construction project undertaken by Dalian Port (PDA), uses stakeholder analysis to evaluate the project, identifies key values influencing the work, and considers the extent to which it meets criteria set out in a specific four-dimensional RI methodological framework. We argue that although it does not use RI rhetoric, the PDA in effect practices latent RI which is also in fact becoming manifest. In conclusion we also consider some of the weaknesses of our argument and some ambiguities of RI.

Enhancing Engineering Ethics: Role Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

Engineering ethics calls the attention of engineers to professional codes of ethical responsibility and personal values, but the practice of ethics in corporate settings can be more complex than either of these. Corporations too have cultures that often include corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and policies, but few discussions of engineering ethics make any explicit reference to CSR. This article proposes critical attention to CSR and role ethics as an opportunity to help prepare engineers to think through the ethics of their professional practice. After a brief overview of the evolution of social responsibility within engineering ethics in the United States, this article shares empirical research with practicing engineers in the mining and energy industries to explore how their formal ethics training did and did not prepare them to grapple with the ethical dimensions of their professional practice. It then illustrates the ways in which these dilemmas and the strategies employed for navigating them are framed within CSR policies and practices and resonate more strongly with role ethics rather than ethical theory as currently taught in most US engineering programs. The article concludes that engineering ethics teaching and learning would benefit from explicitly incorporating critical discussions of role ethics and CSR.

Prudently conduct the engineering and synthesis of the SARS-CoV-2 virus

In response to the outbreak of COVID-19 that has been sweeping the world, scientists reconstructed the SARS-CoV-2 rapidly using a synthetic genomics platform, in order to accelerate therapeutics and vaccine development. However, given the dual-use nature of this technology, there exists a high biosecurity risk. This paper points out the potential risks of the engineering SARS-CoV-2 virus and puts forward 6 questions to this work. The authors emphasize that the two basic values of safety/security and intellectual freedom of research must be considered evenly. From the perspective of responsible development of biotechnology, this paper calls for a careful assessment to the risks of the technology, replacing risky technologies with safe ones. The risks of publication also need to be strictly assessed. The authors believe, in addition to enhancing the "self-government" and self-discipline of scientists and scientific communities, government supervision must be reinforced, laws and regulations should be improved, and global regulation framework ought to be constructed.

Ethics Across the Curriculum: Prospects for Broader (and Deeper) Teaching and Learning in Research and Engineering Ethics

The movements to teach the responsible conduct of research (RCR) and engineering ethics at technological universities are often unacknowledged aspects of the ethics across the curriculum (EAC) movement and could benefit from explicit alliances with it. Remarkably, however, not nearly as much scholarly attention has been devoted to EAC as to RCR or to engineering ethics, and RCR and engineering ethics educational efforts are not always presented as facets of EAC. The emergence of EAC efforts at two different institutions-the Illinois Institute of Technology and Utah Valley University (UVU)-provide counter examples. The remarkably successful UVU initiative gave birth to EAC as a scholarly movement and to the associated Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum. EAC initiatives at the Colorado School of Mines, however, point up continuing institutional resistances to EAC. Finally, comparative reflection on successes and failures can draw some lessons for the future. One suggestion is that increasing demands for accountability and pedagogical research into what works in teaching and learning offers special opportunities.

Midstream Modulation of Technology: Governance From Within

Public “upstream engagement” and other approaches to the social control of technology are currently receiving international attention in policy discourses around emerging technologies such as nanotechnology. To the extent that such approaches hold implications for research and development (R&D) activities, the distinct participation of scientists and engineers is required. The capacity of technoscientists to broaden the influences on R&D activities, however, implies that they conduct R&D differently. This article discusses the possibility for more reflexive participation by scientists and engineers in the internal governance of technology development. It reviews various historical attempts to govern technoscience and introduces the concept of midstream modulation, through which scientists and engineers, ideally in concert with others, bring societal considerations to bear on their work.

Energy constraints

Building on research in anthropology and philosophy, one can make a distinction between type I and type II energy ethics as a framework for advancing public debate about energy. Type I holds energy production and use as a fundamental good and is grounded in the assumption that increases in energy production and consumption result in increases in human wellbeing. Conversely, type II questions the linear relationship between energy production and progress by examining questions of equity and human happiness. The type I versus type II framework helps to advance public debates about energy that address broad questions of profitability, regulation, and the environment, and in the process poses fundamental questions about the reverence for energy growth in advanced technological societies.

Qualitative science policy

Qualitative research struggles against a tide of quantitative methods. To assist in this struggle, it is useful to consider the historical and philosophical origins of quantitative methods as well as criticisms that have been raised against them. Although these criticisms have often been restricted to discussions in the philosophy of science, they have become increasingly prominent in debates regarding science policy. This article thus reviews current science policy debates concerning scientific autonomy and the linear model of science-society relationships. Then, having considered the multiple meanings of quality, it argues for a science policy reassessment of quantitative research, for deeper engagements between science policy and the social sciences, and finally, for a more explicit alliance between science policy and qualitative methods.

Engineering ethics and identity: emerging initiatives in comparative perspective

This article describes and accounts for variable interests in engineering ethics in France, Germany, and Japan by locating recent initiatives in relation to the evolving identities of engineers. A key issue in ethics education for engineers concerns the relationship between the identity of the engineer and the responsibilities of engineering work. This relationship has varied significantly over time and from place to place around the world. One methodological strategy for sorting out similarities and differences in engineers' identities is to ask the "who" question. Who is an engineer? Or, what makes one an engineer? While engineering ethics has attracted little interest in France and formal education in the subject might be seen as redundant, German engineering societies have, since the conclusion of World War II, demanded from engineers a strong commitment to social responsibility through technology evaluation and assessment. In Japan, a recent flourishing of interest in engineering ethics appears to be linked to concerns that corporations no longer function properly as Japanese "households." In each case, deliberations over engineering ethics emerge as part of the process through which engineers work to keep their fields in alignment with changing images of advancement in society.

Co-responsibility for research integrity

To enlarge the discussion of scientific responsibility for research integrity, this paper offers two historico-philosophical observations. First, in the broad history of ideas, modern ethics replaces social role responsibility with appeals to abstract principles; by contrast, discussions within the scientific community of responsibility for research integrity constitute a rediscovery of the continuing vitality of role responsibility. This is a rediscovery from which philosophy itself may benefit. Second, within the context of scientists' concerns, the idea of role responsibility has undergone significant evolution from "collective responsibility" to the notion of responsibility resting with a "trans-scientific community." Further challenges nevertheless remain in order to relate scientific role responsibility for scientific integrity to the relationship between science and society. To promote a notion of integrity not just in science but in the science-society relationship, it may be useful to think in terms of a "co-responsibility" for scientific integrity.

Integrating concepts for the development of qualitatively-derived theory

The development of qualitatively-derived theory (QDT) remains a challenge for researchers wishing to retain the complexity of reality. The techniques of concept integration provide a means to link concepts according to their shared attributes and logically according to their mutual interactions, reactions, and responses. While retaining all of the advantages of qualitative induction, integrating concepts in this manner places QDT theory at the upper end of mid-range theory, or disclosive theory, to produce a theory of higher abstraction and broader scope.

An exploration and advancement of the concept of trust

BACKGROUND

Trust is a concept used both in everyday language and in the scientific realm. An exploration of the conceptualizations of trust within the disciplines of nursing, medicine, psychology and sociology, revealed that trust is an ambiguous scientific concept.

AIMS

In order to increase the pragmatic utility of the concept of trust for scientific application, further clarification and development of the concept was undertaken.

METHODS

First, a concept analysis was conducted with the aim of clarifying the state of the science of discipline-specific conceptualizations of trust. The criterion-based method of concept analysis as described by Morse and colleagues was used (Morse et al. 1996a, 1996b, Morse 2000). This analytic process enabled the assessment of the scientific maturity of the concept of trust. The interdisciplinary concept of trust was found to be immature. Based on this level of maturity it was determined that in order to advance the concept of trust toward greater maturity, techniques of concept development using the literature as data were applied. In this process, questions were "asked of the data" (in this case, the selected disciplinary literatures) to identify the conceptual components of trust.

RESULTS

The inquiry into the concept of trust led to the development of an expanded interdisciplinary conceptual definition by merging the most coherent commonalties from each discipline.

CONCLUSIONS

The newly developed interdisciplinary conceptualization advances the concept toward maturity, that is, a more refined, pragmatic and higher-order concept. The refined concept of trust transcends the contextual boundaries of each discipline in a truly interdisciplinary scientific fashion.

The experience of agonizing pain and signals of disembodiment

Philosophical literature discussing embodiment has yet to address the many and multiple modes of disembodiment. The analysis of interviews with burn patients who had experienced agonizing injuries reveals reference to their own body parts using depersonalized language (i.e., it, the, this). The conjectures tested were: disembodiment (1) due to loss of sensation; (2) due to loss of ability to control the affected part; (3) as learned from physicians; (4) as a means to protect the self in an agonizing situation; or (5) as a means of controlling overwhelming pain. These alternative explanations for the use of linguistic signals of disembodiment were assessed by comparing burn patient interviews with interviews of patients who differed by significant characteristics (i.e., patients who had spinal cord injuries, transplants, or myocardial infarction). Thus, alternative conjectures for the use of disembodying language were excluded, and the interpretation is advanced that the use of disembodying language by burn patients points toward a special human capacity to maintain the integrity of the self during prolonged agonizing experiences. The present study thus attempts a phenomenological interpretation of the body and its experience by drawing on otherwise neglected qualitative research data to broaden and deepen our understanding of the experience of excruciating pain.

Compathy: the contagion of physical distress

A qualitative study examining the nurse-patient relationship has identified the contagion of physical distress or 'compathy' as a significant but otherwise neglected phenomenon. Compathy occurs when one person observes another person suffering a disease or injury and experiences in one's physical body a similar or related distress. Thus, compathy is the physical equivalent to empathy. Although the contagion of physiological (compathetic) responses has been previously documented (for example, as couvade or psychogenic epidemics of the workplace), it has not been theoretically explicated. Triggers for the compathetic response are identified and include observing the suffering, hearing, or reading--or even thinking about--descriptions of the symptoms. The relevance of the compathetic response in the caregiving relationship and the necessity of suppressing the response when inflicting pain as a part of providing therapy are described. The concept of compathy is analysed and defended.

Criteria for concept evaluation

One of the roles of qualitative enquiry is the utilization of qualitative methods for the development, refinement or modification of concepts. Yet, to date, there are no criteria for evaluating the adequacy of a concept. In this paper, the anatomy of a concept is presented, methods of concept analysis critiqued, and criteria for evaluation of the level of maturity of a concept suggested. Evaluation of criteria include assessment of: the definition of the concept, the characteristics of the concept, the conceptual preconditions and outcomes, and the conceptual boundaries. The authors argue that evaluation of a concept must necessarily precede concept development research (using a Wilsonian-derived method, a critical analysis of the literature, or qualitative enquiry) and precede more formal research procedures (such as operationalization or identification of the variables).

Concept analysis in nursing research: a critical appraisal

The four major methodological approaches to concept analysis (Wilson-derived methods, qualitative methods, critical analysis of the literature, and quantitative methods) are compared. The authors suggest that qualitative methods and methods that critically analyze the literature may be selected according to the level of the maturity of the concept and the purpose of the analysis. These methods have the ability to facilitate inquiry for concept development, delineation, comparison, clarification, correction, and identification. Quantitative methods may be used for exploring concepts (e.g., delineating conceptual boundaries), and quantitative instrumentation may be used for concept validation, operationalization, and measurement, thus complementing concept analysis methods by moving inquiry into another level of investigation. The authors conclude by presenting criteria for the selection of an appropriate research approach for concept analysis and criteria for evaluating concept analysis research.