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Socially Responsible Research (SRR)

The implementation of scientific advances in our social practices without us being truly attentive to their impact on our values and representations, or at least with the feeling of powerlessness to control the inevitable process.

(Hirsch 2021)

I think we were so happy to develop all this criticism, because we were so sure of the authority of science. And that the authority of science would be shared because there was a common world. […] We didn’t even need to articulate this notion of a shared world, because it was self-evident. […] Now we have people who no longer share the idea that there is a common world. And this changes everything, of course1.

(Latour 2018)

The eternal question of disciplines and professions for which it is difficult to separate the context of discovery and the context of justification.

(Lénel 2014)

1.1. Introduction

With the atomic bomb, after Oppenheimer, the academic world questioned the responsibility of researchers and engineers for technological innovations. It is always difficult to distinguish between right and wrong… but, for example, when we know that 24% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States are directly linked to the industrial sector, it seems worthwhile to examine how science can help reduce this rate (Everett 2022). In elongating this need for responsibility, Grundwald (2014) points out that questions of technology assessment today extend as far as its future consequences and the need to take account of society’s expectations. However, these expectations are subject to change, as can be seen today on certain issues associated with the war between Russia and Ukraine. It is becoming increasingly complex to distinguish between the individual and collective responsibilities of those involved in innovation. Debref et al. (2019) talk about inscribing social responsibility into the innovation process:

• taking into account potential impacts on social well-being (Pavie 2012);
• using social and environmental constraints to drive innovation (Temple et al. 2018). In other words, innovation has thus become responsible.

For Saint-Simon (1923), it is a question of “revising all ideas to base them on the principles of industry, to relate all morality to production”, a morality centered on satisfying all the needs of the members of the social body. Today, disruptive innovations are taking hold, notably with digital technologies associated with the concept of Industry 4.0. They are changing concepts, knowledge, our way of living together and therefore our social practices as a whole. “Every technical object is a negotiation […]; it is simultaneously the contract that momentarily seals the balance of power and the weapon brandished for other conflicts and negotiations” (Roqueplo 1983).

Even if the exercise is a delicate one, an ethics of the present day should explore new scientific fields and their possible consequences for society. It should go so far as to envisage modes of consultation with society, with a view to making the necessary trade-offs, albeit provisional and incomplete, choices (Hirsch 2021). Innovation is exploding in many fields to the point where attempts at exogenous anticipation, and even monitoring, are proving impossible. This is the current challenge facing ethical thinking. From now on, researchers and creative thinkers have a responsibility linked to their projects to produce new knowledge that can have an impact on society: pluralism of viewpoints and pluridisciplinarity of expertise with a view to the common good.

“Without the freedom to criticize technology, there is no ‘technical progress’ either, only and when this conditioning becomes cybernetic, as is the case today with new technologies, the threat becomes considerable” (Virilio 2001). Virilio takes up the Kantian theme of the public use of reason, which must always remain free (Kant and Mendelsohn 2007). But with big science, and its successive transformations, the novelties enabled by scientific developments bring us new technological possibilities every day. According to Fukuyama (2002), “today there are too many commercial interests and too much handling of money for self-regulation to continue to function properly in the future”. Similarly, researchers are guided in their choices by the possibilities of access to funding, directed by the authorities in major programs (ANR in France and Horizon Europe in Brussels).

So we need to discover new ways of paying attention (getting out of our ivory towers), sharing knowledge (between scientists and technologists, on the one hand, and with society on the other) and interdisciplinary expertise in increasingly complex and wide-ranging fields, mobilizing and affirmation of choices. “It’s all about recognizing the interconnectedness and importance of situated knowledge, and not pitting sources of knowledge against each other and the knowledge sources of scientists” (Lénel 2014). This principle of socially responsible research should enable us to move away from an overly disciplinary and “sacralized” conception of science, specific to France. In these circumstances, for informed debates, according to Jaeger and Mispelblom-Beyer (2014), the following two conditions are necessary:

• to not regard non-ideologized disagreements as a waste of time, an obstacle to the emergence of a truth (at least provisional) that can simply be revealed by asserting arguments of authority;
• to avoid bypassing them with a “conciliationism” that avoids taking a position and leads to inaction (Charlot 1995).

NOTE.– Ethics and responsibility.

In principle, “research ethics” concerns the conditions of acceptability of research involving humans, society and animals. In this chapter, proposals will focus on the social impacts of innovation and little on human-related aspects, and even less on animal ethics (see, for example, Potter 1971; Richmond 2000; Pinsart 2009; Halioua 2017). Under these conditions, thinking does not consist of denying the existence of reality, of “facts”, but in emphasizing the part of construction in the perception we have of them. More than the question of discipline, it is the question of the need to study action that emerges, as this is not the prerogative of any discipline, human sciences or so-called “hard” sciences. So, rather than talking about ethics, which could lead to confusion, we have chosen to talk about the principles of responsibility.

NOTE.– Acceptability.

The expression of a goal to better respond to user aspirations from the earliest stages of innovation, and not in the final phase, when work is limited to the social acceptability of the final product, corresponds, according to Chouteau et al. (2020), to the final exploration of the theme. But in both of these “considerations”, the word acceptability, more or less social, has been used. By “contribting to a metaorphosis” in the way some people deal with this word in relation to society, the discourse on responsible innovation has generally avoided undergoing a thorough conceptual deconstruction (Thapa et al. 2019). However, the dictionary indicates that acceptability refers to a character of something that is more or less tolerable. It is a tricky concept to define, apart from the perception, founded or unfounded, of risks. Since the end of the 30 years post World War Two, in most Western countries, public protests have been voiced. The rise of these reactions associated with technologies appears to be a public thematization of risks, that is, the formation in the public sphere (in the Habermasian sense) of universalizing norms such as “environmental and health protection” (Lehoux et al. 2019).

Generally speaking, the French are clearly interested in new technologies (Bauer et al. 2021). But within this framework between the social body and the worlds of research and innovation, how do the players – all of the players – position themselves, and who is ultimately responsible for what?

The necessary relationship between science and society undoubtedly need to be reexplored periodically with a view to strengthening trust between all stakeholders. The malaise linked to the loss of trust in the “system” is reflected in a number of opinions; but is it possible to find the right words to express and operationalize this search for agreement between science, technology and society (Kerninon 2009)? Ronsavallon (2006) distinguishes several forms of democracy:

• involvement where citizens join forces to produce a “common world”;
• expression, linked to the manifestation of collective feelings;
• intervention that aims for joint action to achieve a chosen result.

In these three forms of political activity, it is clear that the “involvement” component of innovation is not strictly covered (Lechevalier 2019). Forms of mistrust and loss of legitimacy of certain technologies emerge from this deficit. There are several reasons for this negative assessment:

• the lack of explanation of what is being promoted in technological terms;
• the absence of an overarching vision;
• the weakness of a common intellectual elaboration between public and experts;

– the development of a “social disarticulation” by not sufficiently associating technological advantages and risks for humans and...