Ethics Information Seeking and Sharing Among Scientists

Abstract

As nanotechnologies permeate our daily lives, it is increasingly important that we understand the ethical considerations of these innovations and to what extent scientists attend to these considerations. Guided by the theory of reasoned action and an extended version of that model that includes prior knowledge, sense of responsibility, and ethics involvement, we surveyed a sample of nanoscientists to explore their ethics information seeking and sharing. Path analyses support the theory of reasoned action as a useful framework. Findings suggest that making ethics information more available to scientists and redoubling social pressure to seek and share ethics information may help close the ethics-to-practice gap that exists today.

Outbreak! Socio-cognitive motivators of risk information sharing during the 2018 South Korean MERS-CoV epidemic

“…Indeed, in their study of online information seeking and sharing, Li and colleagues (2018) found that risk and benefit perceptions were significant predictors of individual's intentions to seek and share health information via social media. These findings are consistent with similar research that found support for shared predictors of information seeking and sharing in the contexts of nanotechnology (Kahlor et al 2016) and climate change (Yang, Kahlor, and Griffin 2014). The latter study specifically suggested the applicability of Griffin, Dunwoody, and Neuwirth (1999) risk information seeking and processing model to information sharing behaviors.…”

“…As mentioned earlier, a number of information-sharing studies assert that seeking and sharing behaviors share motivational antecedents (Kahlor et al 2016;Lee and Jin 2019;Lin et al 2016;Myrick 2017;Yang, Kahlor, and Griffin 2014). Among the most notable motivators of information sharing to emerge from that body of work were: information seeking (Lin et al 2016;Yang, Kahlor, and Griffin 2014); informational subjective norms (Kahlor et al 2016;Yang, Kahlor, and Griffin 2014), attitude toward sharing (akin to RISP's relevant channel beliefs; Kahlor et al 2016;Lin et al 2016), negative affect (Yang, Kahlor, and Griffin 2014), and prior knowledge and insufficiency (Yang, Kahlor, and Griffin 2014).…”

“…A third construct, more loosely based on the theory of planned behavior, is labeled perceived channel beliefs. This concept is something akin to Ajzen's concept of attitude toward the behavior (Kahlor 2010;Kahlor et al 2016), but it is intended to capture individual's beliefs about the channels via which risk information is available (Griffin, Dunwoody, and Neuwirth 1999). The RISP model has been applied successfully across a myriad of risk contexts ranging from flooding (Griffin et al 2008) to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to Ebola (Yang 2019).…”

“…To summarize, in this study, we are interested in the socio-cognitive motivators of risk information sharing during the 2018 South Korean outbreak of MERS-CoV. Our hypotheses were primarily informed by the RISP model, which, although developed with seeking and processing in mind, has been applied (at least in part) to two risk-information sharing contexts as well (Kahlor et al 2016;Yang, Kahlor, and Griffin 2014). Our 9 hypotheses and 2 research questions are depicted in Figure 2.…”

Science, Values, and Science Communication: Competencies for Pushing Beyond the Deficit Model

“…These were shared electronically before a face-to-face meeting that began several cycles of synthesis and analysis, conducted both synchronously and asynchronously, in which proposed competencies were grouped, emerging themes were and their work. For many researchers, while reflection on the ethical conduct of their research is the norm, reflection on the societal-level implications of their work is rare (Kahlor, Dudo, Liang, Lazard & AbiGhannam, 2016). The vision for the competencies, therefore, is not that they are a set of points to make at a workshop, but rather they are a framework to inform the goal-driven design of a research communications curriculum.…”