Creative Anticipatory Ethical Reasoning with Scenario Analysis and Design Fiction.

This paper presents an experimental approach for engaging undergraduate STEM students in anticipatory ethical reasoning, or ethical reasoning applied to the analysis of potential mid- to long-term implications and outcomes of technological innovation. The authors implemented two variations of an approach that integrates three key components-scenario analysis, design fiction, and ethical frameworks-into five sections of an introductory course on the social contexts of science and technology that is required of STEM majors. The authors dub this approach Creative Anticipatory Ethical Reasoning, or CAER. Scenario analysis is a strategy emerging from business consulting for grounded analysis of plausible future trajectories to inform planning. Design fiction is a creative hands-on activity that blends science fiction and design prototyping to facilitate critical thinking with respect to the societal dimensions of a plausible future technology. The authors present the following findings: in each of the variations, students demonstrated significant engagement with CAER and a substantive shift in their conception of what constitutes responsible innovation and ethical conduct in science and technology. Specifically, their integration of ethical reasoning with stakeholder perspectives and scenario analysis reframed technologies, from unproblematic solutions for societal problems to socially-embedded forms of life that might diverge from designers' intentions. This suggests that CAER could be a useful pedagogical intervention for expanding students' ethical engagement to consider the potential unintended consequences of technological innovation.

Digging Deeper into Precision/Personalized Medicine: Cracking the Sugar Code, the Third Alphabet of Life, and Sociomateriality of the Cell.

Precision/personalized medicine is a hot topic in health care. Often presented with the motto "the right drug, for the right patient, at the right dose, and the right time," precision medicine is a theory for rational therapeutics as well as practice to individualize health interventions (e.g., drugs, food, vaccines, medical devices, and exercise programs) using biomarkers. Yet, an alien visitor to planet Earth reading the contemporary textbooks on diagnostics might think precision medicine requires only two biomolecules omnipresent in the literature: nucleic acids (e.g., DNA) and proteins, known as the first and second alphabet of biology, respectively. However, the precision/personalized medicine community has tended to underappreciate the third alphabet of life, the "sugar code" (i.e., the information stored in glycans, glycoproteins, and glycolipids). This article brings together experts in precision/personalized medicine science, pharmacoglycomics, emerging technology governance, cultural studies, contemporary art, and responsible innovation to critically comment on the sociomateriality of the three alphabets of life together. First, the current transformation of targeted therapies with personalized glycomedicine and glycan biomarkers is examined. Next, we discuss the reasons as to why unraveling of the sugar code might have lagged behind the DNA and protein codes. While social scientists have historically noted the importance of constructivism (e.g., how people interpret technology and build their values, hopes, and expectations into emerging technologies), life scientists relied on the material properties of technologies in explaining why some innovations emerge rapidly and are more popular than others. The concept of sociomateriality integrates these two explanations by highlighting the inherent entanglement of the social and the material contributions to knowledge and what is presented to us as reality from everyday laboratory life. Hence, we present a hypothesis based on a sociomaterial conceptual lens: because materiality and synthesis of glycans are not directly driven by a template, and thus more complex and open ended than sequencing of a finite length genome, social construction of expectations from unraveling of the sugar code versus the DNA code might have evolved differently, as being future-uncertain versus future-proof, respectively, thus potentially explaining the "sugar lag" in precision/personalized medicine diagnostics over the past decades. We conclude by introducing systems scientists, physicians, and biotechnology industry to the concept, practice, and value of responsible innovation, while glycomedicine and other emerging biomarker technologies (e.g., metagenomics and pharmacomicrobiomics) transition to applications in health care, ecology, pharmaceutical/diagnostic industries, agriculture, food, and bioengineering, among others.

Co-Imagining the Futures of Implementation Precision Medicine Using Scenario Analysis and Design Fiction.

Precision medicine has a long history dating to the early 20th century when inquiries into the biochemical basis of large person-to-person variations in susceptibility to human diseases and response to medicines had first begun. Yet, personalized medicine in the 21st century is far from being "future-proof." Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, and changing human values and preferences, call for anticipatory, rather than reactive, approaches to the governance of precision medicine futures. In this context, anticipatory governance is an innovative approach to understanding technology and innovation futures. Anticipatory governance and its corollary anticipatory ethics on emerging technologies require interdisciplinary collaboration and communication to cultivate shared language, imagination, and orientation toward plausible sociotechnical innovation trajectories. This study reports, for the first time in the literature to the best of our knowledge, an anticipatory governance experiment on "implementation precision medicine (IPM)" using scenario analysis and design fiction. Participants were undergraduate students and experts who collaboratively imagined the plausible futures of precision medicine. Given the long history of the precision medicine field, and recent calls for translating big data to real-life clinical applications, implementation was chosen as a key focus area of precision medicine futures. We report here several plausible future innovation scenarios of interest to precision medicine scientists and engineers and researchers in the fields of emerging technology governance, responsible innovation, and social studies of science. Of importance, we found that the playful quality of the design fiction methodology and the pedagogical orientation facilitated by undergraduate student involvement created an engaging creative safe space to build transdisciplinary dialog examining the social and anticipatory ethics dimensions of IPM. Demonstrating the possibilities of such cross-disciplinary dialog and differential expertise, this article is conceptualized and coauthored by all participants further attesting to the importance of co-designing and co-imagining innovation futures in IPM.

Engagement agents in the making: on the front lines of socio-technical integration : commentary on: "Constructing productive engagement: pre-engagement tools for emerging technologies".

This commentary builds on Haico te Kulve and Arie Rip's (2011) notion of "engagement agents," individuals that must be able to move between multiple dimensions, or "levels" of research, innovation, and policy processes. The commentary compares and contrasts the role of the engagement agent within the Constructive Technology Assessment and integration approaches, and suggests that on-site integration research represents one way to transform both social and natural scientists into competent and informed "engagement agents," a new generation of researchers that possess the knowledge and capacities to forge "novel linkages" between the oftentimes disparate terrains of science, politics, and policy.