“Ultimately, there needs to be more of a sense that climate scientists are trustworthy to the values that the public holds,” Brown says. “I’m not sure that’s communicated very well when the climate science community heavily emphasizes the policy neutrality of climate science, and then in other forums comes out advocating immediate action. It’s not plausible, and it doesn’t engender a whole lot of trust.”

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“Colonization has always inflicted anthropogenic climate change on indigenous peoples. Whether it’s forced removal, deforestation, or pollution, we can see countless examples of this. Most of these were cases of industrialization coupled tightly with colonization,” says Kyle Whyte, assistant professor of philosophy at Michigan State University.

Continue reading Interview with Kyle Whyte →

By: Dave Saldana

Don Howard is not interested in setting out a parade of the horribles and scary what-ifs. We don’t have to ponder, as the classic sci-fi film “RoboCop” did in 1987, whether a fully automated law enforcement machine might fail and kill an innocent person. In a world where unmanned aircraft wage war and driverless cars roam the highways, what’s real now is already enough for the director of Notre Dame’s Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values.

Continue reading Don Howard on Robot Ethics →

Actionable scholarship, she explains, looks at the implications of real-world knowledge creation, and what can been done with the accumulated knowledge. 

Continue reading Interview with Katie Plaisance →

May 21^st to May 23^rd
Organized by Heather Douglas, University of Waterloo

Nicolae Morar (The Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State University) & Kevin Elliott (Michigan State University)

From May 21st to May 23rd, the University of Waterloo’s Heather Douglas organized an impressive international workshop concerning the relationship between science and policy. Both of us, Nicolae and Kevin, had the privilege to attend these three intellectually intense days of talks, all casting light on various aspects of the complex interaction between science and governance. A number of scholars form Canada, the US, and the UK tackled questions regarding the nature of science advising in those countries, the role of patents in regulating inventions, the input of think tanks in generating or promoting specific science agendas, the regulation of emerging technologies, the importance of public participation in the scientific enterprise, and the strategies of past and current science advisors in promoting science for education and democracy. The quality of the invited speakers  was outstanding, and the comparisons between science policy in the US, UK, and Canada was instructive.

Continue reading Science-Policy Interface: International Comparison Workshop →