ISSP Newsletter #02 - July 2010

Welcome to the July ISSP Newsletter, about ISSP and related activities, news and events. The newsletter aims to promote ISSP’s central goal: creating a sound public dialogue concerning science, society and policy.

As you might remember from the last newsletter, June featured two big events set up to facilitate such dialogue. August will contain another such event.

Scientific Social Responsibility,
Copenhagen June 17

The first of the June events was a one-day conference on Scientific Social Responsibility, which ISSP organized in collaboration with DEA, CBS, and ATV. This was held in Copenhagen on June 17, and brought together more than 70 people from academia, policy, and industry to discuss ways of understanding and promoting Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR) at the level of individual researchers as well as the institutional and societal levels.

As expected, the conference generated a lively dialogue that covered such core issues as the increasing distrust between politicians and researchers, the need for visionary academic leadership, and the danger of equating SSR with prioritizing the economic and strategic interests of the western world while forgetting the challenges faced by 3rd-world countries. You may learn more about the conference here as well as read more detailed conference highlights here.

Naomi Oreskes,
Odense and Copenhagen, June 24

June 24, ISSP facilitated Scientific Social Responsibility in practice by hosting a series of meetings with Prof. Naomi Oreskes from the University of California, San Diego. Naomi first gave a small and exclusive lecture on “Science and the Public” at the University of Southern Denmark, featuring around 25 professors, heads of departments, and other central stakeholders in the audience. Look out for similar ISSP lectures in the fall, which are already being planned.

Prof. Oreskes then gave several interviews to the media before ultimately presenting a public evening lecture in Copenhagen organized by ISSP in collaboration with Dagbladet Information and the University of Copenhagen. The public lecture revolved around her new book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming and had 195 people in the audience, plus around 30 people on a waiting list. You may read more about Prof. Oreskes’ visit as well as find links and pictures related to the events here.

Upcoming Public event:
Living Technology, August 24

Matching the large audience at both the SSR conference (June 17) and at Prof. Naomi Oreskes public lecture (June 24), we hope to see just as many citizens, academics, policy-makers and industry stakeholders at the ISSP public event Living Technology: Putting People in the Present on August 24.

At this event scientists at the frontiers of research will introduce you to the current state of Living Technology - technology that is useful because it shares the fundamental properties of living systems. Visions of such technologies include protocells that might prevent the sinking of Venice one day, or living materials that may cover our buildings to protect and repair them.

But already today, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are designed and used in the laboratory to allow pharmaceuticals to be synthesized with precision in large quantities; autonomously working robots acting on the same principles thought to underlie insect behavior are increasingly used not only in industrial production but also healthcare; and adaptive network traffic controllers are being developed in the hope to control the flow of the “arteries” of working life.

Quite naturally, technology like this is likely to have a huge impact on society, and thus needs to be introduced to the public. The conference includes a handful of brief popular lectures introducing living technology, followed by a panel debate, where people in the audience can raise the questions they find most relevant. You may learn much more about and sign up for the “Living Technology: Putting People in the Present” conference here.