Responsible research and innovation as a travesty of technology assessment?

Abstract

The relation between technology assessment (TA) and responsible research and innovation (RRI) is a very topical (and controversial) issue, as TA is clearly enveloped in AQ2 ¶ broader science, technology and innovation (STI) processes, such as the EU-wide shift towards RRI. In this short response to van Lente et al AQ3 ¶.'s essay, I first stress that this contribution has several merits; for example, it points to pervasive challenges for TA communities, such as the issue of including normative concerns when assessing innovations, it opens these challenges to debate, without shying away from engaging TA communities. However, I disagree with the authors' claim that RRI would be 'a next step of TA' or even a 'form of TA'. In my essay, I explain why I believe RRI is different from TA and why, rather than a critique of TA, RRI could instead lead to a travesty of TA, threatening the vitality and the uniqueness of TA institutions in the long-term. Under the spell of RRI, TA risks being reduced to a role of mere provider of ex-ante impact assessments. I conclude that following the money attached to RRI has a price that TA institutions should carefully, critically and reflexively consider before they pay. In the early nineteenth century, the English author Mary Shelley published a novel entitled 'Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus' that tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a grotesque but intelligent monster in a scientific experiment. Two centuries later, both the nature and the space of experiments have changed drastically. While experiments are still generally thought of as actions or operations undertaken to test a scientific hypothesis in settings detached from the rest of society (e.g. in scientific laboratories), I suggest situating responsible research and innovation (RRI) in a more macro-sociological understanding of 'experiment', one that implies a process of societal self-experimentation (Gross and Krohn 2005), and with social scientists and technology assessment (TA) practitioners partaking in the experiment as observing participants. 1 RRI's origins are often attributed to René Von Schomberg, 2 a Dutch philosopher with a background in science and technology studies (STS) and TA. Rather than in a scientific lab, it is from within the European Commission that Von Schomberg imagined the world of RRI (2011aRRI ( , 2011b. Like a modern Victor Frankenstein, the inventor now has to follow his conceptual creature and to face its intended and unintended consequences, ' (Van Oudheusden 2014, 2). It is also a label 'that may intuitively feel right, but which exhibits a lack of clarity in terms of definition, practice and, at a policy level, motivation ' (Owen, Macnaghten, and Stilgoe 2012, 752). In spite of its indistinctness, RRI's 'impressive' 'career through the realms of national and European policy' (Van Lente, Swierstra, and Joly 2017) and in academia deserves due attention, especially when it meets older traditions, philosophies and practices purportedly in line wi...

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