A critical juncture for synthetic biology

Abstract

Since its start, synthetic biology has been the subject of intense scrutiny and debate by the public and social scientists. To avoid public resistance and overreaching regulation, the field could learn from how actors in nanotechnology engaged in debate.

The Promises and Realities of Integration in Synthetic Biology: A View From Social Science

“…While bioscience research tends to forge ahead at a rapid pace, often progressing in isolation from other disciplines (Esvelt and Gemmell, 2017 ), the social sciences and humanities have been slower to inform, shape and support synthetic biology innovations compared to nanotechnology applications, for example (Shapira et al, 2015 ). When social science research is included, it can be ad hoc despite being heralded as “critical” to the success of an innovation in modern disruptive technology narratives (Calvert and Martin, 2009 ; Trump et al, 2018 ). This often results in social science contributions being limited in scope and undertaken only once initial bioscience development is already in full-swing (Taylor and Woods, 2020 ).…”

Comparing the Emergence of Technical and Social Sciences Research in Artificial Intelligence

“…In Trump et al (2019), a set of keywords were used to search the Web of Science database and to classify articles on synthetic biology into the physical/technical and social sciences domains, which enabled a discussion of the evolution of that field. A similar approach was used to discuss the co-evolution of physical/technical and social sciences research in nanotechnology (Trump et al, 2018a).…”

“…The confluence of technical and social sciences research has been examined in other emerging disciplines such as nanotechnology and synthetic biology (Shapira et al, 2015;Trump et al, 2018a). In the earliest years of a technology's development, scholarly publications reflect the advancements in the technical domain that defines the field.…”

“…For synthetic biology, the lag time is 3 or 4 years at most (Trump et al, 2019), indicating that social discourse is being applied to emerging developments in synthetic biology relatively quickly, and before enabling technologies such as gene editing are fully explored. In contrast, for nanotechnology research into technical capabilities emerged first on fullerenes (starting in 1985) or carbon nanotubes (starting in 1991), and was only followed by social science discourse of implications on the technology in the mid-to-late 2000s (Mnyusiwalla et al, 2003;Macnaghten et al, 2005;Shapira et al, 2015;Trump et al, 2018a).…”

“…Our past work shows the utility of assessing the codevelopment of a field's technical/physical domain and social sciences domain by reviewing trends in its published literature in nanotechnology and synthetic biology (Trump et al, 2018a(Trump et al, , 2019. This paper employs a similar approach to AI scholarship.…”