I can see both sides here – I agree that upping the confrontation with protestors through the media may indeed have this effect. Though I am sure Sense about Science also feel that by almost playing the protestors at their own game, they are showing the other side of the story in clearer and unambiguous terms.  That by highlighting the issues more prominently, demonstrating that large numbers of credible people support GM and engaging the media again in articulating the ‘side of science’ in this debate, it will stimulate the public to look again at the issues and update their views in the light of new benefits, needs and approaches to GM.

However, perhaps that this method is a bit blunt and perhaps unlikely to do this on its own.  It must, as Roland suggests, be accompanied by much better quality information from the scientists and the funders to acknowledge concerns, about the rationale, the systems in place to assess the security and efficacy of the potential approach, etc etc.

Don’t do more dialogue on views!

However, I am not sure that public dialogue earlier would be anything but yet another ‘horse has bolted’ exercise unless the option to close down the trial was really on the table, which I bet it’s not.

We recently analysed all the major dialogues in recent years on emerging technologies (though not GM) with a view to finding out what they expect from business in relation to the development and use of these new technologies, of which GM could be considered similar.  We found a very consistent view from the public – in summary, why are you doing it, what is the benefit in the round over existing solutions, what are the potential risks and hazards to people and the environment, what systems do you have in place to address potential problems and how transparent are you about problems and how adaptable are your systems to spot negative issues as they arise.

But do respond clearly to concerns

So to do more ‘public’ dialogue to ‘explore people’s views’ yet again as Roland suggests, is I would say unnecessary, stakeholders are very very clear about what their concerns are and unless the trial was cancelled would simply be an ineffective PR exercise.  However, to carefully  take each of the issues which the public and the stakeholders such as farmers, NGOs etc, have expressed concern about (and the literature and websites are awash with info on that), and then to go back to the stakeholders, not just the public themselves, and say – ‘you expressed concern about these areas, this is what we have done and are doing, what concerns still remain and how can we address them’ is a good use of time and tax payers money.

It is certainly clear from the Rothamsted website that they have thought very carefully about these very issues and sought to address them.  Perhaps they tried to engage others on this, but I am sure those with entrenched views will feel they are trying to be co-opted and decline to attend.

Then, for example, the scientist would have had much better answers for the farmer in the Today programme, perhaps even the farmer would have felt that his concerns were listened to, and addressed, and wouldn’t have felt the need to go on to the Today programme.  In this way then, the public at large, and stakeholders, have much better quality information with which to form their own opinion.

But if activists remain unconvinced – then what?

However, let’s say that the GM protestor is not going to consider that their questions have been answered as they are fundamentally against this type of science – and they try to destroy the crops anyway, regardless of whether the public are ‘on the side’ of the scientist or not.  Then what, apart from better security?

I’ve saved my most ‘controversial’ view until last.  So if indeed the safety concerns about a technology have been listened to and addressed or minimised; that this application of GM, for example, would bring us a valuable new strain of wheat which the world needs and can’t get any other way – just maybe what we also need is a more sophisticated and better PR machine for science/GM/research?  Do we not owe it to the public to give them much better quality information, accessible in better ways on the things their money has paid for?

So scientists and funders need to communicate better, and make their assumptions, opinions and methodologies clearer, but also I think there should be a GM&Me website like our Nano&me.  This would be where people who are interested could access information which is, as far as possible, independent and impartial, to help them make their own mind up, to explore the issues and be a hub for dialogue and debate.  This isn’t really all PR, but if done right is a genuine attempt to allow those who take these decisions to at least showcase how and why decisions are made in the context of thoughtful information on issues in the round curated by an independent party.

That’s what these ‘Technology Assessment’ type bodies are called on to do and I think provide a valuable service. But, like the Danish Board of Technology, and our Quango’s they are being dismantle all over the world – at the very same time as public dialogues like the ones we analysed say that they want independent oversight of government, science and business in this area.

Six months ago we got Sneezy and Waffle, two cute little kittens to give our 11 year old boy Joe some company. We got Burmese, because they’re cuddly and affectionate, the ‘dog cats’.  All they do is sleep.

It started with sticks – lots of little sticks brought in as presents and dropped at our feet.  Sweet, they really are like dogs.

Then Robins.  Our lovely friendly garden Robin was paraded with much pride, dead.  Upsetting. A second Robin captured alive while we had friends for lunch.  Taken to the park in a box and set free.

Mice next.  First one brought to my home office and presented to me dead on my keyboard.  Plastic bag.  Bin.  Gulp.

Second one alive, running round my office.  Sitting up, begging for its life like something out of a Disney film.  Being flicked by the cats to make it run around for entertainment.   Small box, gently deposited in the bushes in the next road.

Third, next night, dead on our bed at 3am.  Something in the way the cats moved on the bed made me realise what it was.   Hubby didn’t believe me.  Anyway I’ve done my bit, it’s his turn.  Wrapped in toilet paper chucked out of the bathroom window.

Fourth, next night, semi alive, on bed, 4am.  Hubby’s turn again.  Toilet paper, window.  Found it on the drive in the morning dead.  Toilet paper still stuck on garage roof. Classy!

Then a delightfully uneventful few days while I breathe a sigh of relief.  Oh no, of course the fleas.  Do they count?  I had 23 bites.  Had to spray everything in the house and hoover every day for a week.  Who’s stupid idea was this cat thing anyway.  Oh, mine. Damn.

Two days ago, Lots of lovely birdsong filtres into my office which overlooks the garden. Today one seems bit louder than normal.  Gosh that’s loud thinks me, I wonder what that one is, it must be near.

About an hour later, walk past son’s bedroom to see Sneezy transfixed looking under wardrobe.  Heart sinks.  A torch reveals a tiny duckling, he must have brought in. That’s what the loud tweet was.

To cut a very long story short, Google search says don’t touch it, get someone in, or Ducky Mum will disown it.   Southwark Pest Control, very concerned, very helpful. Give me RSPCA, also very serious, concerned.  Advice is – leave it alone, they are on their way.  I spend the afternoon listening to plaintive cheeps of duckling.

Cats wait at the bedroom door hopefully. 

5pm RSPCA call to say they can’t come after all.  Suggest I take it back to the park, which our house backs on to, (and from whence surely ducky has been so cruelly snatched!) and look for its Mum.  Out comes the robin/mouse box.

Wander like a prat round the park, showing it to little kids in case people think I have actually knicked it. No ducklings in sight.  Find a Park Ranger, no ducklings in the area at the moment.  They suggest I call the Dulwich Park Swan volunteers. So take it home and call them.  They say don’t under any circumstances let it loose, give it some bread and lettuce, no water. (this is helpful, it may happen to you!) It needs antibiotics because Sneezy may have bitten it.  Hubby suggests a seagull grabbed it (which we saw once in St James’s Park) and dropped it and Sneezy actually saved its life! I ponder how you give a 2 inch ducking antibiotics.

Very nice, also very serious, swan lady comes round hot foot with special ducky box and promises it will be very happy.  I donate £20 to the swan sanctuary after she’s gone, embarrassed at the fuss.  10 minutes later, 11 year old comes home, he’s gutted he missed the fun.

Next day, all well, charming interlude forgotten.  Good meeting with a man from the Technology Strategy Board.  I come home to see some strange poo on my upstairs hall carpet.  Poo Wiki suggests it is either a rat or a squirrel.  Surely the cats couldn’t get either through the cat flap which is chipped, so only they can get through?  They are asleep on my bed. All doors are locked, there is no other way in.  I relax and think it must be some sort of seed they’ve brought in.  Clearly in denial.

Hubby at work.  Me & Joe, aged 11 watching TV, suddenly hear a big kerfuffle upstairs.  Oh god.  Sneezy and Waffle in my bedroom transfixed.  Is it a rat or a squirrel or something else?  Someone’s pet Ferret or something?  Hubby at work.  I envisage rats leaping for my son’s throat like they do in films, so we decide to wait for Dad to come home. We both go to wait for Dad at the station, too scared to be at home ‘with creature’.  Cats wait patiently by the bed.

Emboldened now he is back, we get out the necessary implements:  robin/mouse/duck box, tennis racket to squash it under, baseball bat to splat it., blanket to throw on it.  Hubby actually suggested getting our new heavy duty Dyson out and chasing it around to suck it half in, then putting it in the box!  The thought of Dad chasing this thing with a hoover and then it stuck on the end of the hoover has us all in stitches!  I recall with a strange feeling my blog of last week comparing emerging technology regulation and the Whack a Rat fairground game.  I hadn’t realised how it might be re-enacted in real life!

Anyway – if you are still here, click on the link to the video below which shows the unveiling of the creature and its capture by the amazing quick reactions of our 11 year old, Joe.  Contains some bad language which I hope you will excuse given the tension!

Capturing the Creature

I agree with Alice Bell writing here in Times Highered – the real opening up of science is about so much more than publishing impenetrable articles without paywalls.

Access is not understanding.  Understanding is not necessarily helpful

But if we keep to one of the components of that, asking scientists to communicate better about their work, it is still not straight forward.   This was brought home to me recently by that annoying Harvard study which showed that eating red meat every day shortens life expectancy.  Another in a long line of studies telling us we shouldn’t eat this and that, resulting in us throwing our hands in the air and doing what we always do.  Thank goodness for the fabulous Prof David Spiegelhalter for trying to make a bit more sense of it here on the BBC website. Very poor science communication by Harvard in my opinion.

Don’t forget how hard writing actually is

But I also want to acknowledge how really difficult it is to write, and make oneself understood. I have been writing for 30 years in one way or another, often getting paid to do it.   Every article or blog I write is really really hard, which is why I tend to ‘get it out, not get it right’. Writing reports leave me in tears very often, and during every single one I vow never to write another and give it all up and go and work in Tesco.

Then, like childbirth the feeling fades with time and I find myself doing another one.  I have read that it is the same for many writers of all types, but we somehow feel compelled to do it.   So what is it like for those who have never had any experience of this, who don’t feel the need to communicate in this way and who are being compelled to do it perhaps against their natural inclination?  Not only that, but expecting it when they are not even being rewarded for it.   Very tough and perhaps too much to ask with the perverse incentives on citations which currently exist.

So I would like to see more help given by the Research Councils, Universities and Companies to their scientists – it might be support by professional writers, coaching and training, forums to allow them share with each other what a pain in the arse it is etc etc.  We also need better ways to allow the rest of us to access all this new writing, starting with better university websites to help them communicate and others to access their writing.

But most importantly it should be acknowledged and incentivised through the reward system. It’s not enough just to pontificate about the importance of involving the public if scientists are actively penalised for doing so.  Without that it seems to me unfair to ask.

Technology regulation as Whack a Rat game

Jack says: “There’s a game that is played in UK summer fetes called ‘Whack-a-rat’. There is a 4-foot long pipe running up a piece of board. The player crouches down at the exit of the pipe with some sort of whacking device – rounders bat or similar. The stallholder, having taken the player’s 50p, puts a toy rat into the top of the pipe. The rat slides down and shoots out of the other end. The whacker has to react and splat the rat on the ground. If, as normally happens, the rat shoots past, the whacker gets no prize. In this stupid analogy, the regulator has the bat and has to react to innovations that spring from the pipe. Wouldn’t it be better if there was some form of communication from the person inserting the rat, some way of knowing what was coming out of the pipe and when? Even having a transparent pipe would help.”

Here are a few of the questions it raises for me:

1 The trajectory of the rat

Once the rat is in the pipe, the real issue is the speed and trajectory of its passage through the pipe – requiring calculation of it’s weight, the angle of the pipe, the materials the pipe and the rat are made of.

So for emerging technologies say, perhaps we can argue we similarly know what the rat is roughly like going into the pipe (eg research areas, technology platforms) but unlike the rat analogy, we don’t quite know what shape it is when it comes out.  So the decision on it’s trajectory through the pipe is made more complicated.

A transparent pipe therefore allows us to have a much better understanding of what the changes in shape, size, weight, density are when it comes out, and is very helpful in allowing us to correctly analyse the necessary trajectory.

 2 The correct use of the bat

The next bit is assessing the right moment to move the bat – how high to hold it, how fast to bring it down, with what force and when.  The transparent pipe will help with that, but we need skills in bat wielding as well as knowledge of the rat and its trajectory. Different rats may even require different batting techniques.

So for our emerging tech analogy, different types of regulation may be appropriate for different types of product or technology.  Transparency also helps here giving us a clearer view of when and how we need to react.

However, as we all know, the understanding of exactly what is required, the bat’s angle, trajectory and speed and how to deliver it effectively is another thing altogether. (Any tennis player or golfer will know that only too well!).

As ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’, which I am sure translates quite well to the Inner Game of Rat Whacking, tells us, even the most precise knowledge doesn’t necessarily translate to getting the bat and the ball in the harmonious synchronicity you would like!

As we also know regulation is not perfect, getting it right is not as easy in reality as it is in theory, human nature gets in the way!  However, there is something here about values, vision, having one’s head on the bigger picture which also makes for better regulation and rat whacking.  But I haven’t the time to delve into that!

But what about when you miss the rat altogether!?

Then what happens when you miss the rat and it scuttles away potentially giving diseases to everyone it comes into contact with?  Does the Rat Whacker then chase around the fete with the bat, flailing wildly, knocking over cake stalls and bowling over old ladies in the desperate attempt to whack the rat?!  Perhaps cause more mayhem and damage than the rat itself ever would?!

Or will the Whacker have anticipated this, and cordoned off a bit in front of the rat stall, where the rat can be quickly retrieved before any damage is done to the dignity of the whacker or the rest of the fete!

I am rather loving this analogy!

 Leaving Home 2025

“Mum, look, for goodness sake, I’ll take them if it makes you happy.”  Joe grumpily stuffed the self-clean non-iron boxers, trousers and shirt into his tatty rucksack.

He raised his world weary 18 year old eyes to the ceiling.  Packing for your gap year in 2025, with your Mother moping around interfering was a big pain.

“Lovey, I know it’s ‘cool’ to smell now, but if you are going to see Chancellor Maynard when you emerge from the desert, I don’t want you to smell.” explained Liz.  “You can wear your ordinary ones until you stink to high heaven with all your smelly mates, but you have to pander to us old people, we don’t like all this ‘I am a natural’ thing. Just make sure you wash and put these on…”

Joe gave her ‘the look’.

“OK, OK, but just try to look nice when you see him, that’s all I ask. He is a very important person and you might want to study somewhere one day when you’ve earned enough.”  The gap year used to be the one between school and university, now it was the year before school and work.  These days you didn’t go to Uni until later, ‘until you had the experience to make the most of it’, basically, until you could afford it, if you could afford it, which most people couldn’t.

She laughed, “Honestly, if they make Robbie any more realistic we’ll all have to stink to high heaven just to prove we’re real!”  She glanced out of the window to where the robot handyman was finishing the lawn, deftly avoiding the clothes line full of shirts.  Thank goodness for him, she thought.  It wasn’t such a big deal giving up the tumble dryer and wearing these high tech materials now she could finally afford Robbie to do all the work and the carbon capture from the catalytic textiles added to their CarbonCredits which helped.  The new Retro-Techno craze made her quite nostalgic, remembering when her Mum used to hang clothes out to physically dry.  Robbie was much better than Tatiana; at least he does what I ask him to, she thought, and I don’t have to talk to him and make tea! She felt a slight pang of guilt, but she’d heard Tatiana had got another job in the end, back in Armenia, for less money obviously, but at least she was home.

“Ooh yes, that reminds me Joe, before you go, you must show me and Dad how to confirm the upgrades on Robbie. Remember I said something wrong last time and it didn’t take, I don’t want to start pressing things and sending him into some sort of freeze mode again.”

Last time he went away, she’d broken Robbie and had to do her own cleaning – Robo Service Engineers took weeks to come – and ended up breaking the DishVac to boot. These non-water ones were all very well, she thought, but she didn’t really think they worked that well if you didn’t stack them in precisely the right way, which Robbie seemed to manage, but she hadn’t quite got the hang of.

Joe smiled.  “OK Mum.  Wouldn’t like you to have to actually clean”.

Ha ha.  Liz decided to ignore the patronising tone, “it’s OK for him”, she inwardly chuntered, “he’s never lifted a finger to do anything around the house since the day he was born because of all the gadgets his Father and I have worked so hard to get”.  But then again, she wryly admitted to herself, neither had his Grandpa, or Uncle or her husband John for that matter and that was when the women did all the work, not the technology.

She was building up to the trickiest subject of all – the MeStat. “Joe, talking of technology….”  Joe knew what was coming and stalked out of the room, his face like thunder.

This MeStat discussion was going nowhere.  He was insistent that he was going to ‘find himself’ in his gap year and didn’t want any interference from anyone.  Grandpa George didn’t quite have a gap year, he ran away to fight in the Spanish Civil War; Dad hitchhiked to the South of France from Liverpool in a second hand dinner suit and picked grapes until it got too hard and he decided to just drink and lie on the beach. It was hard luck on Cousin George, he couldn’t have a gap year because his coincided with that tedious time before synbiofuels when no-one could fly anywhere unless they were on business, humanitarian aid or had a ton of money.  So he went to Norfolk to help build the Flood Defences as part of the Big Build for the Future programme.  But at least he got paid, and laid.  That after all is still one of the main points of a gap year.

Joe had told them, in no uncertain terms, he was going to have a real gap year, not a sanitised version which his parents approved of.  He and his pal Louis were going to the Mexican desert ‘squirrelling’ with their Freedom Suits, basically solar-powered wingsuits, followed by hanging around in bars.  When they got bored of that, and if they didn’t end up in hospital, they’d be off to help their friend James’s charity, building some new eco housing in the slums of Bolivia.  She hadn’t mentioned how much she approved of the last bit in case it put him off, she just pretended to be worried he might catch something or get stabbed.

Anyway, the main point for Joe and Louis was that, for a while at least, they would be free and alone. No parents and certainly no MeStat, no SocSite, (they’d given up communicating their every thought a few years ago when it all got too boring), and they’d even discussed leaving behind their Tabs as part of the Communication-Overload protest.  In the end, they decided they might need them to post their death-defying squirrelling stunts to try and make some WebCreds on VirtualThrillsNet.

This MeStat argument with Mum had been going round and round for months.  Basically it went like this:  Dad had paying for decades to this health plan which meant they could all have the MeStat for free – to track their health, let them know when some body part started falling apart and send immediate help wherever they were if something catastrophic happened – blah blah, blah.  Mum was insisting he had it so she didn’t have to worry about him.  His view was frankly what was the point of going to play in the desert if you had all this crap wired into you. Where was the risk, where was the fun? It totally defeated the point of the whole thing.

In fact he and his pals thought they’d found a way to hack the MeStat to make it all look fine when in fact they were disconnected and Mum and all the other hysterics watching over him would be sweetly oblivious and get off his back.  It’s just that they hadn’t quite figured it before they went away.  Hence the row.

Liz glanced in the mirror, bracing herself and gathering her thoughts for one last try. Maybe there was a way to get a small implant injected when he was asleep, so at least she knew where he was?   Would he even know unless he was in real trouble and then perhaps he’d be grateful? That wasn’t right though was it.  All that Big Brother stuff when she was younger, that’s what we were trying to avoid. Blast, it was all so tricky.  She smiled, when she was younger it was “don’t forget your phone, ring me if you’re going to be late, don’t go there on holiday, I just want to be sure you’re safe”.  Same issues, different technology!

She bent to the mirror, and looked herself in the eye.  No, like her Grandma when her Dad went off to save the world in the Spanish Civil War, and her Mum when she moved from the Yorkshire Dales to London to ‘make her fortune’, she just had to smile, put up with it and let him make his own way.

At least he was actually going to do something useful and get some Education Credits from James’s eco build project.  Though she didn’t suppose he would need them,  Joe was looking forward to being a Virtual Reality game programmer and you didn’t need a degree for that; he’d been doing it at school since Year 8 as part of an apprentice scheme with VRCOM.  He might never go to Uni and it didn’t bother any of them too much.  Which was lucky, she thought.  With so few Uni’s to choose from now, it was getting a bit tough to get in, no matter how clever you were or how much cash you had.  But her old friend Chancellor Maynard at Harvard had offered to chat to him on his way home and that might at least open his eyes to other, more interesting options for his life than being tied into a career path from age 12. At least they had the money to buy him out of the contract.

Joe walked back in, with his conciliatory but determined face on.  He smiled to see her looking in the mirror

“Still admiring yourself? I don’t want to see a teenager when I get back by the way!”.  She’d had some stem cell treatments earlier in the year for skin renewal.  Her skin was looking great, she couldn’t, hand on heart, regret it.  Bit expensive, but no side effects, no knife, no slathering on expensive creams – she had the skin of a 30 year old, her friend Jane had chosen 16 year old skin and looked decidedly weird for 65!

She hadn’t managed to persuade John to do it yet though, he still looked like an old tortoise. But then all the men said that wrinkles showed they were wise and experienced.  She was supposed to admire him for it, while she, and all the rest of women she knew, were looking younger and younger.  Not much change there either, just a bit more tech to choose from, she thought.

Liz turned and smiled at Joe and gave him a long hug.

“Alright lovey, I give in, you do without the MeStat. Kill yourself if you have to, when you’re lying there with a broken neck with no prospect of rescue, think of me and I want you to voicetab for posterity the exact phrase ‘I love you Mum, I wish I’d listened to you, you were right all along!”

Why It’s Time to Embrace Nanotechnology, Neuroscience, Synthetic Biology and Geoengineering   

Thanks heavens we live in an era where we understand at least the basic essentials of evolution—it makes things so much simpler than having to believe in the agency of choirs of angels.  But the problem with our understanding of evolution is that it, too, keep evolving.  And one of the big leaps forward was the notion of punctuated equilibrium, which suggested that rather than evolution proceeding in a smooth, continuous and broadly predictable fashion, as Darwin’s work seemed to suggest, it goes through periods of convulsive, unpredictable change.

And the same turns out to be true, as economists like Nikolai Kondratiev and Joseph Schumpeter first proposed, about our economies.  We now understand – or should do – that waves, cycles, supercycles and periods of creative destruction powerfully shape economic activity.

For extended periods of time, our economies crank along using a suite of technologies that evolved some time in the past, for example steam power, steelmaking, canals and railroads, or electrical power generation, the internal combustion engine and automobiles.  None of these new technologies was embraced with open arms by the world at large: remember the farmers who protested that the sight and sound of passing steam locomotives would cause their cows to abort?

The historical record suggests that critics were right to worry, of course: the influx of navvies, with their tools, dynamite and alcohol was scarcely a welcome development for communities along the line of the new canals or railroads.  But, over time, the clusters of new technologies settled down and a new economic and environmental equilibrium was established.  Or perhaps we should say seemed to be established, given the climate – destabilizing of such technologies as coal-fired power generation, something that only became clear once earlier problems like soot and acid rain had been tackled.

Now we face the emergence of an even greater cluster of new technologies, whose implications seem to be on an almost logarithmically greater scale.  They include such fields as nanocience and nanotechnology (think of “grey goo” concerns, or the work of the late Michael Crichton, including novels like Prey and Micro), advanced neuroscience (with the threat that neoromarketing will allow our brains to be read by all sorts of unsavoury people), artificial intelligence (with robots and mechanical intelligence taking over an increasing proportion of warmaking), human cloning (remember Brave New World and The Boys from Brazil?), medical bionics (who wouldn’t want to be Bionic Man or Woman, especially when everyone else has been enhanced?), synthetic biology (where people worry that instead of just tinkering with genes, we start to create totally new species) and geoengineering (well, where to begin or end the list of the possible global consequences?).

Much of my working life has focused on the assessment of possible environmental, social or economic consequences of new technologies.  In the 1980s, for example, I produced a range of reports for the World Resources Institute on emerging technologies in such areas as genetic engineering waste management and satellite remote sensing.  I spent two decades working fairly intensively with biotechnology companies.  And I find myself increasingly interested in areas like synthetic biology, having met Craig Venter, one of the field’s pioneers and head of the J. Craig Venter Institute, at a World Economic Forum event in Davos a few years back.

As these new areas of science, technology and business evolve over the coming decades, we can be sure of endless controversies, a few really major catastrophic events, a bunch of learning through failures, and the conversion of at least some of the most energetic skeptics and critics – after the requisite epiphanies – into equally energetic proponents, or at least their recruitment into roles where they become part of supervisory and auditing processes designed to minimize societal or environmental risks.

In the end, however, we should be careful of being too obsessed with particular technologies and their various applications.  Yes, we need something along the lines of a global version of the now-discontinued (but in its heyday sometimes brilliantly insightful) U.S. Office for Technology Assessment (OTA).  And way before we get to that point, we need to further evolve global networks necessary to monitor, audit and engage the scientists, technologists, investors, corporate players and regulators involved in all of this.

And we also have to be acutely aware of how all this is going to impact our mindsets, our behaviours, our cultures and ultimately, the prevailing paradigm that underpins and informs everything we do.  These are economic, psychological and cultural convulsions in prospect here.  Some will argue (and sometimes fight) for zero risk, others will argue (and sometimes fight) for the development and deployment of new technologies able to drive critical aspects of our social and environmental footprints to zero.

This is an area that I have begun to explore and map out in a new book, The Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier, due out in May.  Truly, this is an immensely exciting time to be alive and involved in all of this.  Accommodating a global population of 9 billion-plus by mid-century will require us to do things that are almost unimaginable today.  But, just as television, air travel or the internet would have been unimaginable to earlier generations, and whether we like it or not, many of our equilibriums are destined to be punctuated.

John Elkington is Executive Chairman of Volans (www.volans.com), co-founder of SustainAbility (www.sustainability.com), blogs at www.johnelkington.com, tweets at @volansjohn and is author or co-author of 18 books, including The Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier, due out from Routledge in May.

Here are a few top of the head observations on how it resonates with our Responsible Innovation report and  ‘What the public wants to know about company use of innovative technologies – an analysis of 15+ public dialogues on emerging technologies.  (Take a look here at this Youtube video presentation on Prezi (you can turn the sound down if you don’t want to listen to me!) or an outline report here (Professional design underway!)

Responsible Innovation and Trust

Companies are good innovators of new products, services or ideas

The good news for companies is 46% think that is important, and 41 % think that they also deliver that.  This shows there is confidence in the ability of companies to innovate and to deliver against stakeholder expectations.  But then it gets more complicated…..

Trust is going to be increasingly based on societal engagement factors says Edelman.  It must be based on listening to customers, and responding to social or environmental needs.  There is a big gap between what customers feel is important in this area and company performance. (62% think it is the most important, but only 28% think companies do it well.)

Our work also indicates that without engaging with their stakeholders, and delivering relevant products, public confidence in innovation could be eroded.  Public and stakeholder expectations indicate time and again that innovative technologies should be used for social benefit and that the views of customers and other stakeholders are essential to developing products that deliver that.

Governments main job re business is to protect the public from irresponsible business practices

Stakeholders don’t feel that governments regulate business enough and that their most important role in relation to business is to protect consumers from irresponsible business practices. The drivers of such irresponsible behaviour are seen to be poor management, unethical business practices and shortcuts leading to poor quality.

This also resonates with our findings where we see the public not particularly trusting government to protect them from irresponsible business practice, and looking for independent oversight of companies (and actually governments) to give them confidence in the safety and effectiveness of new technologies.

Academics, technical experts and ‘a regular employee or a person like me’ are the most trusted

To me this indicates a need for credible, evidence based information and the need to cut through the corporate sales patter and get to what really matters.  This strongly resonates also with our top line finding

‘Be honest, be open and don’t duck the tricky issues’.   Nice to know we aren’t out of kilter with the world!

Practice Radical Transparency

‘Making the system more transparent’ is proposed by the Edelman research in relation to the financial sector, but is seen as equally applicable to business in general.  This was one of the more surprising findings of our work – that the public has a strong residual trust in the general safety of products, but wants to feel more confident that companies have robust systems in place to ensure they have thought through the potential for harm to people and the environment and have plans in place to put things right when (not if!) they do go wrong.

We rarely see this on company websites or in social reports.  It is our belief that the ‘radical transparency’ this report calls for will include the health, safety and environmental systems in place to ensure company products are safe and effective, particularly where innovative new technologies, such as biotech and nanotechnologies and synthetic biology, are used.

Our soon to be launched report ‘Building Confidence in Innovative Technologies – what stakeholders expect and how companies can respond’ will go into more detail about what different stakeholders expect and how companies can respond to increasing expectations on transparency about their use of innovative technologies.  Drop me an email at hilary@matterforall.org if you would like a copy or to be invited to our launch.

My presentation seemed to go down well. Following input from our stakeholder meeting earlier in the week I proposed that retailers had a pivotal role in oversight of new technologies for the following reasons:

• They are the link between products and the public
• Can act as a catalyst for good practice in others
• They need to insist on better quality information for customer safety
• ..and insist on better quality information for their own risk management
• Consider innovative responses to their own stretch targets on innovation, energy, waste etc

Those present seemed to agree that retailers had an unique position in the supply chain and that as gatekeepers on behalf of the consumer they had an important role as a catalyst for good practice.

They didn’t appear to shy away from this responsibility, however, in the discussion afterwards it was clear that there were some things getting in the way of them doing that as effectively as they might, particularly in nanotechnologies:

Nano, wot nano?

• Retailers have policies on nano, requesting companies using nanotechnologies to disclose that to them in advance.   But this rarely comes up, except with sunscreens, because they don’t see any products using nano brought to them.
• They don’t think there are many nano enhanced products they stock unknowingly, but cannot be sure.
• They don’t know where to go to find out if this is a matter of inadequate disclosure, or just that nano is not much used in consumer products at the moment.

How are they supposed to know?

I hear a lot that there are very few nano enhanced innovations in the consumer products area.  It seems logical that if this is an expensive technology, with the benefit needing to be clear in order to justify its use, that this would be part of the sales spiel from the manufacturer.  This is not happening.

A retailer known for its positive approach to innovation and rigorous approach to governance said to me in a meeting earlier in the week:

‘To be honest, we think there isn’t much nano out there, because if it was, someone would have tried to sell it to us. We just don’t see it and from what we know about nano, it looks more likely that it is not that it is being hidden, so much as not being used. People seem to be being precautionary in this area.’

What information can be given to retailers to help them make those judgements in the absence of legislation mandating disclosure?  Where can they go to get it?  I didn’t have an answer for them.

Responding to consumer concerns – no information either

The difficulties of obtaining information on risks was also seen as a problem.  ‘The public asks us some very unusual things and sometimes it is very hard to get information to respond to them properly. When we can find it, most of it seems to be in subscription only journals and often very difficult to translate for the public,’ explained one.

These retailers have thousands of products and thousands of ‘material issues’ of concern to different types of stakeholder.  They are not able to subscribe to all of the arcane journals pertaining to all of their products or the ingredients contained in them.

Clearly a central repository of information on nanotechnologies for example, freely accessible, would be useful to help them respond and engage effectively with their customers and other professional stakeholders?

There is, for example, the Nano Observatory, but they don’t seem to communicate well to people outside the immediate nano community.  These types of organisation should see communications as a central part of what they do, whereas the it seems to me the focus of such organisations is on data gathering, not getting the data out to the people who need it.

Anticipating negative impacts – nano silver exclusions?

Some of the retailers have specific exclusions – nano silver being the one mentioned at the meeting and in previous discussions with retailers.  Not for direct health and safety reasons, but because of concerns about anti-bacterial resistance.

How do they get quality information for valid exclusions on nano products like this? Often it is down to their own research, which naturally has to be limited given the number of issues and number of products they have to track.  Who can they trust to give them quality information which they can relay to the consumer?  I didn’t have much of an answer again.

If people are ‘not bothered’ what is their responsibility to communicate?

One of the retailers had done its own research to understand consumer views on nanotechnology, for their own purposes. (I’m trying to get a copy!) They found that the public wasn’t really that bothered about nano products at the moment, (much like most public research on the subject). Where does this lead them in terms of their own communication? If the products are not available, their customers are not interested, and there is limited information to make judgements about specific risks and opportunities, perhaps focusing on area where customers are clamouring for information looks like a much better use of their time and money?

Please don’t give us pointless products!

All the retailers I speak to appeal to manufacturers, ‘please don’t bring us pointless products using a technology for the sake of it, which doesn’t bring a benefit and where you clearly haven’t thought through the risks. But do use new technologies to solve some of the big problems we all face in a way which offers real benefits and is safe to use, we are desperate for those.’

Seems a sensible request to me!

So whilst I felt there was a willingness to get stuck in to the issues on nanotechnologies in consumer products, I was sympathetic to their concerns about lack of useful information.  I didn’t know where to send them myself.  Of course that’s what www.nanoandme.org was invented for, and which remains unfunded.  Which I did drop into the conversation!

If you would like a copy of the presentation I gave then do email me on hilary@matterforall.org.  Our report on Responsible Research and Innovation prepared at the request of the European Commission is also available on the front of our website or here

An interesting BBC Hard Talk programme explored this very well yesterday bbc.in/tWc7FH. Doesn’t seem to be any answers or even suggestions yet, but I am sure there are many.

So apologies to Profs MacNaghten & Owen for directing my ire (below) at them instead of the people/process which allowed SPICE to be commissioned the project in the first place without at least communicating more effectively about the governance, strategy and international context in which they made the decision.

Previous blog read:

I have just read the article in Nature from Prof Phil McNaghten and Prof Richard Owen which explains what went wrong with SPICE.  There is a paywall, so there is an article in the Guardian here

I am actually still pretty happy with the conclusions mentioned in my original post called ‘Views on Geoengineering Cock Up’  and which are not a million miles away from their conclusions, but would like to make a few comments on the learning from the project outlined in the paper.

I should say that I know that those involved are trying very hard to get this right and I bet are rather gutted about the reaction.  I am being a bit of a smart alec (moi?), and I know it is so much easier to criticise from the outside looking in, but it still feels to me rather predictable.  However, I don’t think anything would have stopped the reaction they got with a geoeng pilot, but they could have really done themselves a favour and got the basics right first, put them in the public domain so that at least we could all see that a credible process was in place.

The paper concludes:  Aspects of SPICE’s governance could have been improved. 

• The framework should have been in place before the project’s conception.

Err, yes!  This is what governance is.  This is a basic error of judgement.  It should have been in place.  It should have been launched to the world and clearly available and signposted from a number of obvious places, and, as I keep banging on about, posted on something like ‘Geoengineering&me’ which is an accessible place for us all to see what is going on and possibly contribute.

• The test date should not have been announced until the stage-gate criteria had been met; 

Ditto, it is hard to see how such a credible bunch could have been designing this process but not take any notice of itself.

• and the structures and resources to support the social research should have been in place earlier. 

Not quite sure what that means.  The issue here is not about getting more research or more consultation, but about process, governance, transparency.

• Even now, the decision on whether to proceed will not be easy. There are few right or wrong answers to the many questions about climate engineering.

Yes, you will always have a very vocal, very well organised opposition who can communicate, campaign and galvanise opinion much better than a bunch of scientists and social scientists can do. Wonder what they are going to do about that!?

• But it is vital that we make space to listen to and discuss these questions, and that the debate transparently influences the decisions that are taken.

Indeed!    The thing is, another dialogue isn’t going to tell you something you don’t know. So what will be the purpose of the next stage?

• For geoengineering technology to progress, its developers must be mindful of wider impacts from the outset; and it must proceed under robust governance mechanisms. The SPICE responsible-innovation framework is one evolving approach to achieving it.

Aren’t these two different things?   In my mind, to be credible, the Geoengineering Governance Project (or whatever it is eventually called) should develop an overarching governance framework, internationally agreed, which sets parameters for Geoeng research and development which different countries/universities, even companies (given Richard Branson’s ideas!) can follow to demonstrate compliance and rigorous ethical procedures.  Following agreement of that, and understanding the expectations of transparency and performance that dictates, the SPICE project is then refined and then, in all likelihood, undertaken.

More research on when and how we need it?

Though I am only on the fringes of this and it may all be happening, I see the need for more (or more publically accessible) research into what the thresholds might be on the various Planetary Boundaries, for example, which makes Geoeng then a necessity; what is happening to track that, what the likelihood of the aerosols doing any good and the potential repercussions, then we can see if they can be made to work or not.  I appreciate that the Royal Society report did that, but again, an international process as well.

The ones most effected must be included

It is likely it won’t be us who gets it, if we get climate change wrong or geoengineering wrong, developing nations, as usual, may suffer most from our great ideas.  What is the process for involving them in these decisions? What is the international body taking the lead on this?  I personally want to see these scientists and others busting a gut to make this happen as there appear to be many things happening in different countries, and there may well be an international effort which I don’t see and this group is connected with.

The Public Engagement Triangle

The Public Engagement Triangle. was a tool developed by Lindsey Colbourne for the UK Government’s Sciencewise Expert Resource Centre on public engagement.   It was designed to help people (particularly university researchers and government departments) explore their reasons for carrying out public engagement of any type.

Three broad but often overlapping purposes are defined (‘transmit’, ‘collaborate’, ‘receive’) and the emphasis of any planned activity towards these purposes is located on a 2-dimensional triangle. It was create to help people to, for example:

• plan, design and draw out objectives for communication and public engagement activities
• form a strategy: match the type of public engagement technique to the identified needs and help in considering what range of techniques are available
• evaluate an activity against its objective

This is a useful tool and has been widely used in planning public engagements in the research area.

As part of our ‘Walking with Stakeholders’ project, MATTER was seeking to engage companies in undertaking their own engagement as part of our focus on Responsible Research and Innovation and alongside the new AA1000SES Stakeholder Engagement Standard (more of which another day) we considered how to use the Public Engagement Triangle within that context.

The missing link – Cogitation

However, we felt that one crucial piece of the tool (of both initiatives actually) was missing, or could be emphasised more clearly in the model – the internal deliberation and strategic response to the interaction with stakeholders – what we have called Cogitation.   Stakeholder engagement of any type is superficial and potentially a waste of stakeholder time and company money unless it stimulates reflection and responsiveness from the organisation involved and we felt that this needed to be emphasised more clearly. So we have suggested  adapting the model to include that more inclusive loop of engagement and reflection in the adapted model below

Why Cogitate?

We chose to use the word ‘cogitate’ over the more widely used ‘reflect’, (or think, ponder, ingest, consider which were also suggested by kind followers on twitter) because reflection feels a bit passive, academic, airy-fairy, impractical; it summons images of being on your own, looking out of the window thinking big thoughts.  Cogitate seemed to us to have a clunkier feel, more practical, indicating difficulty, intractability, rigorous thought processes – more suited to the complexities of responding effectively to the perceptions, needs and desires, often conflicting, of a company’s different stakeholders. We also use stakeholders rather than public as companies use the word ‘stakeholder’ more readily than public, to mean all those who influence or are influenced by its operations. The public, and public engagement, is seen as a subset of that.

Stimulating focus on purpose

We also  feel that this emphasis on cogitation and the loop rather than the triangle focuses attention more firmly on the development of the purpose of the engagement as well as the essential responsiveness and feedback required.  There is more work to be done to explore how the feedback aspect can be reflected in the drawing more powerfully. 

Our Walking with Stakeholders project launched later this month will explore in detail how companies can engage with their stakeholders at different points in technology innovation pathways and how this can be structured department by department and stakeholder by stakeholder according to the structure of the stakeholder engagement loop.

The false hierarchy

There is a general sense in some debates about the triangle, that ‘Transmit’ is PR and therefore inferior.  ‘Receive’ is OK but is really a step on the pathway to nirvana which is ‘Collaborate’.  However all of these can be equally useless if used as a box ticking exercise and equally valuable if used at the right time for the right purpose.   

However, Transmit, or for us Communicate, is the place where transparency sits and this is hugely important and can, in fact, be more challenging for companies than any of the others.  It involves potentially disclosing things they would rather not talk about and think is none of our business.  But it is also how they demonstrate their accountability to stakeholders.  This is the real bone of contention which our Walking with Stakeholders project seeks to explore and come to some form of agreement on.

Examples of stakeholder engagement from the loop

The basis of this thinking is our project which evaluated ‘What the public expects from companies about the use of new technologies’ and our recent event with investors where they asked for more information (blog here) plus 30 years stakeholder engagement experience of various types.  The Public Engagement Triangle document also has useful explanations too, thought these are focused on companies.

Communicate

Companies are allowed to do PR and marketing.  They are allowed to show off their products, communicate about what they do and try and persuade us to buy them.  It’s what gives us choices, pays all our bills, pays taxes and pays for much of our public services.  (Of course, not when it is misleading, has false or inflated claims, inappropriately targeted etc and I’m not going into conspicuous consumption here!)

However, where this really comes into its own for our purposes is where companies are more transparent about their approach to new technologies; the making of their products, the systems in place to demonstrate safety to different stakeholders at different times. For example:

• Openness about their use of new or controversial technologies.  Why they chose to use that technology over another, the benefits it brings over existing technologies, issues around its use which customers may wish to or need to know (eg side effects, uncertainties, safe-use, disposal issues etc).

Via websites, training, packaging, B-2-B comms, media relations or advertising etc

• Illustrating their approach or response to any uncertainties and evolving social or ethical issues which may (or may not) arise from its use.  (eg response to societal concerns about safety, ethical debates etc.

Via media relations, appearance at conferences, events etc.

• Feedback activities, including the findings of Receive or Co-Create activities and how the company has responded and any changes it has made.

Via websites, social & annual reporting mechanisms, meetings with professional stakeholders

• Informing clients of business to business companies on their approach to material/product development, safety testing and data, stakeholder engagement, traceability.

Via richer safety data sheets, personal meetings, training, trade media relations, conferences 

• Training workers or customers’ workers or even suppliers, in safe handling and use of new materials or products.

Via training programmes, standards and guidelines, internal conferences, websites etc. 

• Sharing toxicology, HSE, clinical trials data etc to add to the body of evidence about safety and reassure customers, inform suppliers, policy makers and others

Via open source directories, websites, direct information sharing with government, customers, regulators and even competitors and other businesses through meetings, conferences etc

• Reporting progress against goals in this area aligned to business strategy. Focus on the the performance of the company, how it understands and discharges its responsibilities in the area of Responsible Research and Innovation, part of that behaviour will be its engagement, but most will be about the systems and processes it has in place to ensure appropriate, safe and effective products using new technologies.

Via social & annual reporting mechanisms, contribution to standards bodies etc

Listen 

Listening in this context may include traditional market research in format, eg focus groups, but may be used at different times, for different reasons and may use more innovative approaches.  It is likely that good practice companies will consider more innovative approaches to listen to and understand external views.  For example:

• Consultation to understand the views and perceptions of the public or other stakeholders to inform their approach (eg usage, new issues, concerns, perceptions, uncertainties, new contributions to understanding on risk and benefit, social or ethical issues)

Via meetings, conferences, stakeholder fora, focus groups, surveys, citizen’s juries, public meetings, on-line fora, polling or engagement projects, polls and market research. 

• Data mining – researching and using new systems to understand views of key stakeholders and uncover subtle shifts in scientific evidence, perceptions, new issues and information

Via  academic sources, social science research, twitter, social network, media data mining 

 Co-create 

To worth together with stakeholders – perhaps civil society organisations, ngos, customers, or members of the public or customer base to develop a way forward on an issue, a product or process in which mutual learning takes place and which is of significant value to all parties concerned.  As David Santillo of Greenpeace says in his response to our Responsible Research & Innovation report here genuine open source innovation is different from designing surf boards with customers or focus groups to consider how to adapt a product.  But co-creation indicates a level of embedness of the issues and concerns which takes it beyond dialogue. With co-creation, the project is created and delivered in partnership with stakeholders, in a more collaborative mode than even with a two-way listen and respond mechanism.  

This approach is not suited to all types of project, but can be highly effective in, for example:

• Embedding responsiveness to key issues into product design at source and considering how best that can be done.
• Generating new thinking and developing new customer/stakeholder-led approaches to products, systems or services
• Delivering new products and ways forward where mutual consensus is necessary and where a deep resonance with stakeholder perspectives is important for both parties, not just the company concerned.

Via personal interactions with a limited group of stakeholders. Usually through brainstorms, meetings and on-line interactions where feedback is ongoing and collaborative from both parties.

Cogitate

If there were to be a hierarchy, this may be the best candidate for the top slot.  The inter-departmental and cross-departmental internal debates and discussions are the whole point of the external relationship and knowledge development modes.  Cogitation is effective in considering the appropriate approach to a research or product development, developing a strategy and action plan on a complex or controversial issue, or an effective or innovative response to changing evidence or expectations.

It is essential to making effective and responsible use of the information gained from listening and co-creation initiatives and developing an effective and open communications strategy.  Dialogue data which sits on someone’s desk while the rest of the organisation goes on with business as usual is irresponsible engagement and a waste of company and stakeholder time and money.

Aligning this new knowledge with the vision, values and corporate strategy for the organisation can be hugely valuable to individual teams or departments and the company as a whole.  It is essential to the demonstration of Responsible Innovation.  This may include, for example:

• Cross-departmental brainstorms, discussions and debates where key issues intersect different areas.  This happens rarely and the responsible innovation agenda is a great place to start.
• Inter-departmental discussions in response to internal and external feedback
• Collaborative strategy or product development – where the perspectives of different departments and stakeholder views provide a richer source of information from which to design processes and products.

Via meetings, collaborative web interactions, facilitated off-site brainstorms etc

We hope to be able to illustrate some good examples of each of these in our report.  If you have any, please do link to them in a comment or send them to hilary@matterforall.org.

Please feel free to criticise, contribute and elaborate on this thinking here or by email