Nano-scale teaching issues, macro-scale ethical questions
By Thoreau
By reading my blog posts you’d think that my academic career this quarter has been nothing but agonizing over the best way to teach intro physics. However, there have been a number of other, more fun teaching issues on my mind. One of them is the nanotechnology course that I’m (slowly) writing a proposal for. This weekend, I had a lot of fun deciding how to teach the ethical/social component of the “nanohazards” unit.
If I wanted to, I could always make it into a lecture/discussion on the general question of “What do you do about consumer product and industrial hazards when you have imperfect information?” That could easily lead to a nice 4 way (or more) food fight between environmentalists, businessmen, unions, consumer advocates, etc. However, I think I’ll leave that mess to other courses. You could teach an entire course on that topic, or even write an entire dissertation on it, and still fail to cover all the issues.
Instead, since this is a GE course, I think I’ll contrast the scientific approach to uncertainty with the social and political approach. Suppose that two people come to me, one of them saying “This NanoProduct(TM) will cause cancer!” and the other saying “This NanoProduct(TM) will definitely not cause cancer!” As a scientist, I can ask both of them for evidence, and if neither person has enough evidence I can simply say “I don’t know” and leave it at that until somebody gets better evidence. (I could even draw a more nuanced conclusion like “Under these circumstances it does elevate the risk of cancer by X%, and under these other circumstances there is no evidence that it elevates the risk of cancer.”)
But what if I’m a policymaker? If neither side convinces me, I still have a decision to make. Do I allow NanoProduct(TM) to go to stores until it’s proven to be dangerous, or do I refuse to allow NanoProduct(TM) to go to stores until a sufficient amount of evidence for safety is presented? Or do I have a disclosure requirement? Do I require the seller to buy insurance against possible hazards? Do I say that the buyer assumes all risk? Do I say that the buyer only assumes risk if the seller discloses enough info? How much info is “enough”?
The answers to these questions depend on the assumptions that we make, the risks that we accept, the values that we adhere to, and a bunch of other factors. Notions of liberty, responsibility, consent, and so forth all come into play. The questions that we ask will be shaped by these factors, and will determine the conclusions that we draw.
So instead of having a big debate over the general issue, I think I’ll give everybody in the class some reports to read on an actual product (I’m thinking of Magic Nano, the cleaning spray that caused problems in Germany, but I could yet decide on something else) and then divide them up into groups. Each group will be given a different set of questions to consider. The goal of the exercise will be to contrast the scientific approach to uncertainty with the approaches of policymakers, lawyers, ethicists, investors, etc. As a follow-up to that activity, I might assign them to read an article on nanotechnology regulation, and then discuss the assumptions made by the author, and the value judgements he was drawing on.
I’m not interested in having my students reach a particular conclusion on the general issue of product regulation. I just want them to understand the difference between the questions asked in basic science and the questions asked in other avenues of life. Whether they come down in favor of allowing a product to go forward or not is less interesting to me than making sure they know that these issues go beyond the scope of basic scientific research. As soon as you go from basic research to a policy decision you have to make certain value judgements on how to handle uncertainty, and I want them to understand that anybody who says “Scientifically speaking, this product should/shouldn’t be allowed on the market” is not really speaking from a scientific perspective, because factors beyond the scientific method entered into that thought process. It’s fine to bring in those other factors (indeed, it’s essential to avoid paralysis) but it’s dishonest to pretend that a recommendation for or against a policy (or a lack of policy, if you want to be libertarian about this) is a scientific judgement.
See, some of the physics pedagogy issues on my mind are far more fun than “What’s the best way to teach about the pendulum?” and “Do labs really teach Newton’s Laws?”
Comment by Kyler Kuehn —
November 18, 2007 @ 3:52 pm
This is exactly the sort of analysis that determines how one handles the policy aspects of climate change. Specifically, science can give us a certain amount of data on current climate states (with low uncertainty), and quantitative modeling of future climates can tell us what changes to expect (with significantly more uncertainty), but that still leaves the question: what do we, as a nation or as individuals, actually do about it? Is uncertainty a reason to act, or not to act? What level of action is reasonable given our knowledge, or lack thereof? What are the ranges of “ethical” responses in this situation? I’m interested in hearing how your students respond to the product-liability topic, and if that correlates with their stance on policy responses to global warming.
Comment by Thoreau —
November 18, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
Kyler-
I don’t know if global warming is the analogy that I’ll want to make when I teach this class. For starters, by the time the GE committee approves my course proposal the glaciers will have already melted, then refrozen, then melted again.
More seriously, in the case of global warming there’s the issue of people trying to exaggerate the degree of uncertainty to forestall a policy response. So we need to distinguish between the uncertainty of a scientist and the drummed up uncertainty of a sock puppet or lobbyist.
Comment by Dave Woycechowsky —
November 18, 2007 @ 9:27 pm
Remember that time you wanted to open up an ice cream shoppe and have all the ice cream buyers sign consent forms?
Now you seem to think the world is more complicated.
What changed your mind?
Comment by brennan —
November 18, 2007 @ 10:39 pm
If you actually manage to define nanotechnology in a useful way, this is interesting. Otherwise, nanotechnology looks very much like the chemical industry.
I think there is one fundamental question that would be fun to cover–the question of right time for proof. do we need to prove a technology does no harm prior to using it, or do we wait until we have evidence (and, to be fair, doing some work to mitigate obvious harm). This is the crux of the interesting part of the global warming debate.
What are you going to discuss in terms of nanotechnology anyway. Semiconductors? designer bacteria and viruses? In general, nanotechnology is a completely nntechnical designation, and I don’t see a point in talking about nanotechnolgy without a specific example.
In this case, oil and plastic eating bacteria are a good choice. How about an engineered parasite that attacks malaria in mosquito hosts. Or a plankton that quickly metabolizes phosphates in run off and spins out silk-kevlar copolymers. You have to create a technology that has potential for unanticipated problems, and then have people think through them.
All of this is reasonably well covered if you start by talking seriously about engineered seeds, nutraceuticals and drug and virus research.
But, like all things, these concerns being new to physicists makes it both important news, as well as original.
Comment by Thoreau —
November 18, 2007 @ 11:05 pm
Brennan-
I was going to survey non-living systems that might reasonably be characterized as nanotechnology (nanostructured materials), and observe that most of the concerns here are not so different from those facing other chemical products. A big part of the class will actually be the opposite of what you fear I’m suggesting: I’m well aware that these issues aren’t terribly new or original in many cases. I want to dispel a lot of hype.
I will, however, probably devote a bit of time to the speculative ideas about “nanobots” or whatever and observe that (1) these things are a long, long, long way off (so get over the “singularity” talk, guys) and (2) if they do ever happen, they’ll be more like the concerns facing bioengineers. So, again, not as new and different as the hype might suggest.
As to the idea of burdens of proof, I’m aware that the different issues facing science, law, regulation, economics, etc. aren’t terribly new. However, this intellectual distinction may be something that many of our students aren’t clear on, and I’d like to delineate the different ways in which a burden of proof might apply, and distinguish scientific thinking from the concerns in other areas of inquiry.
So, don’t assume that I’m a victim of hype here. Quite the opposite. I want to survey the things called “nano” these days, draw distinctions between old and new ideas, separate old and new issues, and separate plausible prospects from wild-ass speculative hype. (While inserting all the necessary disclaimers about how something unexpected could happen and render moot judgments about hype vs. plausibility.)Â The trendy word “nano” will be the lure to get students into class, but once they’re enrolled they’ll get the perspective of somebody who’s skeptical on all the hype.
Comment by Thoreau —
November 18, 2007 @ 11:16 pm
Shorter version: It will mostly be a class on the areas of materials science that use the “nano” label these days, and near the end we’ll spend some time observing that the ethical concerns aren’t so different from those in the chemical industry. I’ll say that I don’t care to rehash all the old discussions, so I’ll just focus on the intellectual distinctions between burdens of proof in different fields. Then I’ll spend the last week or two debunking “singularity” talk and related BS.
So, no, I’m not one of those physicists who assumes that it must be new and exciting because this is the first we’ve heard of it.
Comment by Hansen —
November 19, 2007 @ 6:58 am
This is in general an interesting and most necessary discussion and the exercise you suggest should prove a good way to get the real opinions of how important the uncertainties are, but to use Magic Nano as the example of an actual product, would be a mistake, as it is proven by the German Authorities that there is no man made nanoparticles in Magic Nano (that’s why it’s magic), and the supplier, a company called Nanoproofed, has admitted that it’s a case of “mistaken†marketing and name.
http://www.bfr.bund.de/cd/7839
Comment by Thoreau —
November 19, 2007 @ 10:41 am
Doh! I forgot about that!
Still, MagicNano might make for an interesting case study because it WAS a case of bad labeling. I could get everybody to go through the exercise and then say “OK, it turns out that this hazardous product doesn’t contain nanoparticles. Does that change any of the ethical issues? Does it change any of the scientific issues regarding the documentation and quantification of hazards?
But, yeah, I need to include another example besides MagicNano.
Comment by Timothy —
November 19, 2007 @ 11:46 am
Dave: Remember that time you were an internet douchenozzle with selectively bad reading comprehension? Man, those were the days…wait, I guess these are the days. Good times, good times, you idiot.
Comment by Dave Woycechowsky —
November 19, 2007 @ 12:19 pm
Remember that time you were an internet douchenozzle with selectively bad reading comprehension?
I am not sure what I am not getting here. T. used to say that potential health risks could be handled by merely having customers sign consents. Now he is dealing with a different product (nanotech) that has a possible health risk (T. mentions cancer, but really it could be anything — even a new disease, we just don’t know).
This time though, T. does not suggest the signing of consents as a solution, he does not even seem to be considering this solution in the context of nanoparticle products.
Now there may be good reasons why the tort solutions for T.-the-hypothetical-ice-cream-salesman are different than the tort solutions for T.-the-hypothetical-nanoparticle salesman, but I think this would be a nice issue to have T.’s opinion on. It is part of the issue that he should at least think about b4 teaching the kids.
My best guess is that T. would say that the risks of ice cream are known, and so people can give informed consent, while the the risks of nanoparticles (if any) are unknown, and so customers cannot give informed consent. On the other hand, if the nanoparticle consent form is written to disclaim a specific risk (say, cancer), then it would seem that the customer has been informed of the nature of the risk (that is, cancer) and has consented to it. Maybe the customer needs to know not just the nature of the risk, but also to have some idea how likely the risk is to happen, that is not just the nature of the risk but the probability. Then again, that would cast doubt on the ice cream parlour consents because people may not understand the actual probability of getting diabetes from T.’s ice cream (and this probability might change depending on whether T. uses cane sugar, or whether cost pressures force him to resort to HFCS).
Anyway, the time to hash these issues out in his head is now, because if he brings up the issue in class, one of his students is likely to think of the idea of consent forms on their own. I mean, T. did!
Comment by Timothy —
November 19, 2007 @ 2:29 pm
If your folks didn’t bother teaching you to read, Dave, I’m not going to try. Your best guess is based on a sarcastic comment from some years ago. I remember that thread, you fool.
I have a hypothetical torte solution for you, of the same sort that a certain lady of French descent might offer: EAT CAKE YOU OBNOXIOUS PEASANT.
My best guess is that Dave will pretend not to know what I’m talking about, bring this back around to how he’s helped T grow as a scientist and a person, then send us a link to the awful, awful noises he tries to pass off as music. Honestly, D, why don’t you quit the law gig and go into physics pedagogy research?
Comment by Dave Woycechowsky —
November 19, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
Timothy, where does all this anger come from? I don’t think it is good for T. make him see us fighting like this. He pertends not to be hurt when we fight like this, but that is just him being brave.
Also, are you sure that you really lissened to my music with an open mind, Timothy? How much did you lissen to?
Comment by brennan —
November 20, 2007 @ 11:27 am
Hi Thoreau,
It sounds great–the shorter version is an excellent synopsis of a great course.
I do apologize for the insinuation that you were a hype-buyer of the lowest sort. Even middling sort. As a materials scientist/physiucist/chemical engineer, these sort of things sometimes push my buttons the wrong ways. Thanks for taking the time to explain in detail–my reactions got the better of me.
Best of luck
bp
Comment by Andromeda —
November 21, 2007 @ 9:30 am
I like the idea; anything that gets people obsessing over grey areas is fine by me. Two things that spring to mind:
1) It’ll be important to look into technologies that people don’t know too much about (which may be a problem in that it’ll be harder to find info, particularly from the policy angle, on the ones that haven’t gotten a lot of media play…) But if you have things that too many people already have strong opinions on, the discussions won’t work.
2) One of the tricky things here, I think, will be that scientific and popular notions of uncertainty — what it means, how to deal with it — are so different. Scientists want to quantify precisely how uncertain they are of a result, tell you all the qualifications it comes with. This is a virtue. to the general public, that sort of thing sounds like wishy-washy hedging. They want to know — is it true or isn’t it? The qualifications get lost. Even the vocabulary of uncertainty gets used in different ways by the two populations, the most prominent example of course being the theory of evolution — to a scientist “theory” means “something we have elevated to essentially certainty subject to the possibility that we could encounter a counterexample tomorrow”, whereas to the public it means “only a theory”.
I think a lot of students will not initially understand what a different role uncertainty plays in the two spheres, and how different the meanings of the words are. So if you’re asking them to *do* something with that uncertainty, you may get bogus thought if you haven’t addressed this. And I’m not totally sure how to get people to see the scientist side of it (much less understand how deeply that treatment of uncertainty is held as a virtue) — it’s one of those things that seems totally obvious if you’ve taken enough science courses with the intent of becoming a scientist, but I have no idea how it works if you haven’t.
Neat idea, though, and if the glacial forces ever align I’d love to hear what sort of discussions you have.
Comment by J sub D —
April 5, 2008 @ 7:35 pm
If I understand correctly the point (lesson?) is, science is not public policy. Science is just one of the considerations that goes into making said policy.
e.g. Gasoline causes cancer, it is explosive when mixed with air. That is science. That really doesn’t answer any questions on policy, does it?