From Cases to Capacity? A Critical Reflection on the Role of ‘Ethical Dilemmas’ in the Development of Dual-Use Governance

The dual-use issue is often framed as a series of paralyzing ‘dilemmas’ facing the scientific community as well as institutions which support innovation. While this conceptualization of the dual-use issue can be useful in certain contexts (such as in awareness-raising and as part of educational activities directed at the scientific community) its usefulness is more limited when reflecting on the governance and politics of the dual-use issue. Within this paper, key shortcomings of the dilemma framing are outlined. It is argued that many of the issues raised in the most recent debates about ‘dual-use’ bird flu research remain unresolved. This includes questions about the trajectories of certain lines of research, as well as broader trends in the practice and governance of science. This leads to difficult questions about current approaches to the dual-use issue within the US, as well as internationally.     

Killing your children to hurt your partner: A South African perspective on the motivations for revenge filicide

The aim of the study was to investigate the offence characteristics and motivations for revenge filicides. Revenge filicide is an act where one parent kills their own offspring for retribution to hurt and upset the other parent. The cases of 20 revenge filicide murderers (14 male and six female) were analysed to determine the motivations and offence characteristics of revenge filicide offenders. It is the first South African study to highlight the motivations and associated characteristics in revenge filicides. Themes such as a loss of social identity due to rejection; extreme rage type anger; external locus of control; sadism; a desire to cause pain and a need to inflict harm are highlighted in this article. The initial emotional response may escalate from mild anger to a level of narcissistic rage which eventually culminates in the murdering of the child to punish and hurt the other parent and to restore control.     

Data Sharing and Dual-Use Issues

The concept of dual-use encapsulates the potential for well-intentioned, beneficial scientific research to also be misused by a third party for malicious ends. The concept of dual-use challenges scientists to look beyond the immediate outcomes of their research and to develop an awareness of possible future (mis)uses of scientific research. Since 2001 much attention has been paid to the possible need to regulate the dual-use potential of the life sciences. Regulation initiatives fall under two broad categories—those that develop the ethical education of scientists and foster an awareness and responsibility of dual-use issues, and those which assess the regulation of information being generated by current research. Both types of initiatives are premised on a cautious, risk-adverse philosophy which advocates careful examination of all future endpoints of research endeavors. This caution advocated within initiatives such as pre-publication review of journal articles contrasts to the obligation to share underpinning data sharing discussions. As the dual-use debate has yet to make a significant impact on data sharing discussions (and vice versa) it is possible that these two areas of knowledge control may present areas of ethical conflict for scientists, and thus need to be more closely examined. This paper examines the tension between the obligation to share exemplified by data sharing principles and the concerns raised by the risk-cautious culture of the dual-use debates. The paper concludes by reflecting on the issues of responsibility as raised by dual-use as relating to data sharing, such as the chain of custody for shared data.     

Work-related well-being in a call centre environment: The moderating role of age and tenure

The study investigated age and tenure effects on the relationship between job demands and resources, and job-related burnout and work engagement. Study participants were a convenience sample of 382 call centre agents in the information technology industry in South Africa (females = 54%; black African = 47%; single = 47%). The call centre agents completed the Job Demands-Resource scale, the Burnout scale, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, and the Work-related Sense of Coherence scale. Multiple hierarchical regression analyses and moderation analyses revealed that age and tenure moderated the relationship between overload, insecurity, and burnout. Tenure moderated the relationship between organisational support and work engagement. Interventions to foster job resources for work engagement and healthy work participation should take into account the work-related sense of coherence of call centre agents as well as their age and tenure.     

Presupposition Failure and the Assertive Enterprise

I outline a discourse-based account of presuppositions that relies on insights from the writings of Peter Strawson, as well as on insights from more recent work by Robert Stalnaker and Barbara Abbott. One of the key elements of my account is the idea that presuppositions are “assertorically inert”, in the sense that they are background propositions, rather than being part of the “at issue” or asserted content. Strawson is often assumed to have defended the view that the falsity of a presupposition leads to catastrophe, in the sense that a false presupposition “wrecks the assertive enterprise”. I argue that the discourse-based account in terms of assertoric inertia can explain how cases of presupposition failure can sometimes be non-catastrophic; there are cases in which the assertive enterprise operates smoothly, despite presupposition failure. The chief problem facing this line of argument is to account for cases in which presupposition failure is catastrophic. If presuppositions are assertorically inert, then how can their falsity ever wreck the assertive enterprise? I offer a principled account that delineates the circumstances in which false presuppositions are, and those in which they are not, catastrophic.     

Moving Life Science Ethics Debates Beyond National Borders: Some Empirical Observations

The life sciences are increasingly being called on to produce “socially robust” knowledge that honors the social contract between science and society. This has resulted in the emergence of a number of “broad social issues” that reflect the ethical tensions in these social contracts. These issues are framed in a variety of ways around the world, evidenced by differences in regulations addressing them. It is important to question whether these variations are simply regulatory variations or in fact reflect a contextual approach to ethics that brings into question the existence of a system of “global scientific ethics”. Nonetheless, within ethics education for scientists these broad social issues are often presented using this scheme of global ethics due to legacies of science ethics pedagogy. This paper suggests this may present barriers to fostering international discourse between communities of scientists, and may cause difficulties in harmonizing (and transporting) national regulations for the governance of these issues. Reinterpreting these variations according to how the content of ethical principles is attributed by communities is proposed as crucial for developing a robust international discourse. To illustrate this, the paper offers some empirical fieldwork data that considers how the concept of dual-use (as a broad social issue) was discussed within African and UK laboratories. Demonstrating that African scientists reshaped the concept of dual-use according to their own research environmental pressures and ascribed alternative content to the principles that underpin it, suggests that the limitations of a “global scientific ethics” system for these issues cannot be ignored.     

Should We All be Scientists? Re-thinking Laboratory Research as a Calling

In recent years there have been major shifts in how the role of science—and scientists—are understood. The critical examination of scientific expertise within the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) are increasingly eroding notions of the “otherness” of scientists. It would seem to suggest that anyone can be a scientist—when provided with the appropriate training and access to data. In contrast, however, ethnographic evidence from the scientific community tells a different story. Scientists are quick to recognize that not everyone can—or should—be a scientist. Appealing to notions such as “good hands” or “gut feelings”, scientists narrate a distinction between good and bad scientists that cannot be reduced to education, access, or opportunity. The key to good science requires scientists to express an intuitive feeling for their discipline, but also that individuals derive considerable personal satisfaction from their work. Discussing this personal joy in—and “fittingness” of—scientific occupations using the fields of STS, ethics and science policy is highly problematic. In this paper we turn to theology discourse to analyze the notion of “callings” as a means of understanding this issue. Callings highlight the identification and examination of individual talents to determine fit occupations for specific persons. Framing science as a calling represents a novel view of research that places the talents and dispositions of individuals and their relationship to the community at the center of flourishing practices.     

“Ethics When You Least Expect It”: A Modular Approach to Short Course Data Ethics Instruction

Science and Engineering Ethics - Data science skills are rapidly becoming a necessity in modern science. In response to this need, institutions and organizations around the world are developing...