Designing trust

The decision making process in technological development, with its underlying suppositions of certainty and controllability, contributes to fomenting social resistance to technology rather than trust among social actors. Those underlying suppositions are in disaccord with values and world views expressed by the new social movements. These movements, which form part of today’s civil society and are critical of many modern technologies, tend to hold an implicit view of technology as a social experiment under uncertainty. The tendency of the current design activity of basing design decisions on criteria, like engineering efficiency, defined as objective, is contributing to this lack of trust in the very process of decision making, which many social actors are currently demonstrating. Technology, however, depends on sustained public trust. Future technology design has therefore to take into account, as one of its basic functions, the creation of trust among actors.     

Biotechnology Development in Spain: A Change of Paradigm?

This article presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Spanish biotechnology sector, including its scientific, business, policy and social aspects. The study differentiates two sub-sectors, considered to be the most representative: Biopharma and Agro-food. The results show that biotechnology development in Spain has entered a new phase. Traditionally, research and development in Spain followed an unstructured path built around regional spaces and driven by factors and influences external to Spain. However, the emergence of a fast-growing sector of spin-off companies from the public research system, specifically in the Biopharma sector, points to a change of model of development of the industry, on the national as well as the regional level. The data also show the key role which public policy plays in creating a suitable framework for innovation and point to the need of analyzing the influence of social and cultural factors on the development of the biotechnology sector.     

A new social contract for technology? – On the policy dynamics of uncertainty

This paper proposes a typology of two fundamentally opposing conceptualizations of managing technology under uncertainty: ‘technology governability’ and ‘technology selection’. A wide variety of different versions of these idealized conceptualizations can be shown to underlie the controversies about scientific‐technological development. The example of genetic engineering indicates that such points of view are reconstructed over time in different forms and diverse settings, not only by the scientific community or during regulatory decision making, but by a rather wide‐reaching spectrum of social actors. Thus, the current efforts to open up science and technology decision making to a wider range of participants is interpreted here as an effort of generating a new social contract for technology management, by way of bridging the differences between the two opposing conceptualizations.     

The regional dimension of innovation and the globalization of science: the case of biotechnology in a peripheral region of the European Union

This article presents the results of an analysis of the relationship between public sector research and industry development in the field of biotechnology in a peripheral region of the European Union: the Region of Valencia (Spain). It contributes empirical data on the delocalized impact of research-industry relations in a globalized economy. It also uncovers a gap between a relatively well-developed public research sector in biotechnology and a weak biotechnology industry. The analysis raises questions as to the role of the concept of predominantly local knowledge communities in regional innovation systems, as well as the model of linear technological development, both of which exert an important influence on decision making in research and development (R&D) and innovation. A high level of R&D is shown to be a necessary condition for stimulating innovation, but does not suffice. Rather, R&D must be integrated with a number of different actions to correct deficiencies in the regional innovation system.     

The role of epistemic policies in regulatory science: scientific substantiation of health claims in the European Union

This paper presents an analysis of the concept of scientific substantiation in European health claims regulation. It focuses on the controversies about the demand for the establishment of cause-and-effect relationships between food consumption and health outcomes in claim substantiation. Our analysis, on the basis of regulatory and scientific documents, identifies two opposing views about the aims of health claims regulation. Each of these two stances links certain regulatory objectives with specific epistemic policies, that is particular sets of scientific methodology, criteria, and procedure. The regulators, in selecting a demanding evidentiary approach based on a hierarchy of methodologies that requires causal data for substantiation of claims, give priority to preventing the authorization of false claims. The opposing view, espoused by the critics of this approach, opts for less demanding requirements for substantiation, implying the market availability of a wider range of products with health claims that may provide individual as well as public health benefits. We argue that one of the objectives that underlie the European regulators’ demand for causal data is to protect their own credibility, by trying to isolate them from value-laden debates about the limitations of scientific methodologies, as well as the societal and policy implications of regulatory decision-making.     

Biotechnology Development in Spain: A Change of Paradigm?

This article presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Spanish biotechnology sector, including its scientific, business, policy and social aspects. The study differentiates two sub-sectors, considered to be the most representative: Biopharma and Agro-food. The results show that biotechnology development in Spain has entered a new phase. Traditionally, research and development in Spain followed an unstructured path built around regional spaces and driven by factors and influences external to Spain. However, the emergence of a fast-growing sector of spin-off companies from the public research system, specifically in the Biopharma sector, points to a change of model of development of the industry, on the national as well as the regional level. The data also show the key role which public policy plays in creating a suitable framework for innovation and point to the need of analyzing the influence of social and cultural factors on the development of the biotechnology sector.     

The role of controversy in engineering design

To ensure the acceptance of technical systems and products in society, the crucial role of social controversy in technology development has to be more openly recognized. Many of the current acceptance problems of technical systems developed because the social controversy generated by the system under design was not sufficiently taken into account. Actively managed and organized controversy, on the other hand, could become an integral part of the engineering design process and the basis for a new underlying philosophy of design. Technical design in companies and technological organizations could be opened up to the active involvement of social actors usually excluded from it (like the actual users of the technology as well as potentially affected social groups), to allow for the incorporation of more diverse points of view into the design of new technical systems; in this way, socially and ecologically, as well as technically and economically more acceptable solutions could be generated.