New Directions in Environmental Ethics: Interdisciplinary and Public Engagement with Emerging Contaminants and Technologies

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This award funds an interdisciplinary training program for doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows in Science, Technology, and Society that will generate and communicate new ethics tools for handling emerging contaminants and emerging technologies in a responsible and publicly accountable fashion. Emerging contaminants are chemicals for which there is limited knowledge of health and evironmental effects, yet which are prevalent in the environment. Examples include PBDE flame retardants and bisphenol A. Emerging technologies are designed to advance human livelihood, but have implications for human health, the environment, or society that are often unclear. Examples include nanotechnology, bioremediation technologies, and synthetic genomics. Because so little is known about the effects of these products, and because these products sometimes change as they are put into use, new forms of ethical engagement are required. This award will generate new ethical tools to handle these types of technologies and chemicals, and train graduate students and postdoctoral students to use these new tools. The principal investigator will create a theory of "reflexive research ethics" that draws on STS theories of health social movements, public engagement in science, and ethics. Through coursework, mentoring relationships with STS faculty, participation in a special seminar series, and work with community groups and scientists, trainees will learn reflexive research ethics. This theory and practice of research ethics makes use of scholarship on how to engage publics and scientists in varied fields in complex decisions about scientific products whose effects are not well known but which are potentially dangerous. It also provides new methods for addressing complex ethical issues raised by emerging scientific products and technologies. Training and research will help strengthen cross-disciplinary and public discussions of science ethics. The broader impacts of this award include the generation new ethics tools that can be used by other researchers to carry out NSF's Responsible Conduct of Research training requirement in innovative ways; the engagement of community groups through mutual learning between community partners and students; and the publication of student and mentor projects.