Promoting scientific literacy in evolution through citizen science.

Evolutionary understanding is central to biology. It is also an essential prerequisite to understanding and making informed decisions about societal issues such as climate change. Yet, evolution is generally poorly understood by civil society and many misconceptions exist. Citizen science, which has been increasing in popularity as a means to gather new data and promote scientific literacy, is one strategy through which people could learn about evolution. However, despite the potential for citizen science to promote evolution learning opportunities, very few projects implement them. In this paper, we make the case for incorporating evolution education into citizen science, define key learning goals, and suggest opportunities for designing and evaluating projects in order to promote scientific literacy in evolution.

Editors' overview perspectives on teaching social responsibility to students in science and engineering.

Global society is facing formidable current and future problems that threaten the prospects for justice and peace, sustainability, and the well-being of humanity both now and in the future. Many of these problems are related to science and technology and to how they function in the world. If the social responsibility of scientists and engineers implies a duty to safeguard or promote a peaceful, just and sustainable world society, then science and engineering education should empower students to fulfil this responsibility. The contributions to this special issue present European examples of teaching social responsibility to students in science and engineering, and provide examples and discussion of how this teaching can be promoted, and of obstacles that are encountered. Speaking generally, education aimed at preparing future scientists and engineers for social responsibility is presently very limited and seemingly insufficient in view of the enormous ethical and social problems that are associated with current science and technology. Although many social, political and professional organisations have expressed the need for the provision of teaching for social responsibility, important and persistent barriers stand in the way of its sustained development. What is needed are both bottom-up teaching initiatives from individuals or groups of academic teachers, and top-down support to secure appropriate embedding in the university. Often the latter is lacking or inadequate. Educational policies at the national or international level, such as the Bologna agreements in Europe, can be an opportunity for introducing teaching for social responsibility. However, frequently no or only limited positive effect of such policies can be discerned. Existing accreditation and evaluation mechanisms do not guarantee appropriate attention to teaching for social responsibility, because, in their current form, they provide no guarantee that the curricula pay sufficient attention to teaching goals that are desirable for society as a whole.

A case study of teaching social responsibility to doctoral students in the climate sciences.

The need to make young scientists aware of their social responsibilities is widely acknowledged, although the question of how to actually do it has so far gained limited attention. A 2-day workshop entitled "Prepared for social responsibility?" attended by doctoral students from multiple disciplines in climate science, was targeted at the perceived needs of the participants and employed a format that took them through three stages of ethics education: sensitization, information and empowerment. The workshop aimed at preparing doctoral students to manage ethical dilemmas that emerge when climate science meets the public sphere (e.g., to identify and balance legitimate perspectives on particular types of geo-engineering), and is an example of how to include social responsibility in doctoral education. The paper describes the workshop from the three different perspectives of the authors: the course teacher, the head of the graduate school, and a graduate student. The elements that contributed to the success of the workshop, and thus make it an example to follow, are (1) the involvement of participating students, (2) the introduction of external expertise and role models in climate science, and (3) a workshop design that focused on ethical analyses of examples from the climate sciences.

Techno-Anthropological Ethics and Health Information Systems Technologies.

One of the most important Techno-Anthropological intellectual virtues is the ability to make contextualized ethical judgments of new and emerging technologies. This Techno-Anthropological core competence is especially relevant in Health Information Systems Technologies, which is a field characterized by inherent ethical dilemmas such as the pros and cons of regulation of research databases with sensitive information, or storing and application of tissue and blood samples. In this paper we present a method to make 'proper and quick' ethical estimates in Health Information. The method guides its user to make ethical judgments by splitting the judgment process into four steps: (1) Identification of intended beneficial consequences, potential misuse, unintended side effects and long-term consequences for culture and society. (2) Linkage of intended consequences, misuse, side effects and cultural implications to appropriate ethical values. (3) Identification of ethical dilemmas related to a specific use of the Health Information Systems Technology under assessment. (4) Formulation of appropriate technological and institution design criteria that can transcend the identified ethical dilemmas. The methodology will be applied to a the discussions at a hearing on ethical challenges accompanying research involving health data organized by the Danish Council of Ethics and the case of risk reducing breast cancer surgery based on diagnosed genetic predisposition to breast cancer.