Fukushima - The Triple Disaster and Its Triple Lessons: What can be learned about regulation, planning, and communication in an unfolding emergency?

On 11 March, 2011 a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the North-eastern coast of the Japanese main island of Honshu. Although reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant shut down as expected, the 15m tsunami which followed caused a loss of power which disrupted the cooling systems. Over the next few days, four of the six reactors experienced catastrophic events, requiring the evacuation of plant personnel and residents of nearby villages in a 20km radius. Nuclear contamination has continued to hinder clean-up and reconstruction efforts in Fukushima prefecture, one of the three worst hit by the tsunami, and it is estimated that the plant itself could take up to 40 years to decommission. Moreover, subsequent investigations have revealed serious systemic issues in the regulation of nuclear power and in the mechanisms for provision of scientific advice to the public, policymakers, and to disaster response personnel, which has contributed to a considerable loss of public trust in both scientists and the Japanese government. Handling of the ‘triple disaster’, therefore, raises important questions for understanding the scale and extent of nuclear contamination after accidental release, but also about the need for realistic emergency planning and for consistency, accuracy and trust in the dissemination of useful information, not only during an unfolding disaster and immediate recovery period, but often for years, even decades, to come

New horizons, old friends: taking an ‘ARIA in six keys’ approach to the future of R(R)I

This response reflects upon the issues brought up by the Discussion Paper with regard to the loss of RRI funding in Horizon Europe, and what that might mean for early career scholars in our community and our field. As a knowledge project aimed at institutional change, one could argue that RRI is still incomplete and we must now anticipate a threat to that completion. However, that should not stop us from also anticipating the possibilities of an R(R)I whose future is ours as a community to determine

Fighting Science with Social Science: Activist Scholarship in an International Resistance Project

This paper draws on a socio-historic case study of the Feminist International Network of Resistance to Reproductive and Genetic Engineering (FINRRAGE) in order to consider the ways in which activists create and develop knowledge in movements around complex emergent technologies. Using documentary and interview data, and an analytic framework drawn from Eyerman and Jamison's cognitive praxis paradigm, the paper outlines certain conditions under which activists may be able to create both social and social scientific knowledge in support of their claims. The paradigm itself is also interrogated, and suggestions made for extending and refining the framework through incorporation of theories of knowledge drawn from science and technology studies

A cyberian in the multiverse: towards a feminist subject position for cyberspace

Theory generally regards cyberspace from the embodied position, looking from the outside into an imaginary universe. 'Cyberia' is a term that may be employed to describe a state of the imaginary in which this gaze is reversed to theorise cyberspace from within its architectural and communal spaces to assess its potential to change the embodied world. This paper argues that the multiversal figurations inherent in 'Cyberian' subjectivity can help formulate a different understanding of oppression by rooting its metaphors within the context of technologies of the World Wide Web. It also considers weblogging technologies as an aid to bringing a more diversified offline subjectivity into the online public sphere

Looking Back at Ten Years of RRI: Review of R. von Schomberg and J. Hankins (eds): International Handbook on Responsible Innovation: A Global Resource

Book review

The Diversity Dividend: does a more diverse and inclusive research community produce better biomedical and health research?

Over the past decade, the need for greater diversity and inclusion across research systems has received greater emphasis from policymakers, funders, universities and stakeholders. Strategies in support of diversity and inclusion need to be underpinned by the best available evidence. This short briefing paper is a summary of a larger review carried out by a multidisciplinary team from University of Sheffield of the relationship between a diverse and inclusive biomedical and health research community, and the qualities and impacts of its research

Genome editing: the dynamics of continuity, convergence and change in the engineering of life

Genome editing enables very accurate alterations to DNA. It promises profound and potentially disruptive changes in healthcare, agriculture, industry and the environment. This paper presents a multidisciplinary analysis of the contemporary development of genome editing and the tension between continuity and change. It draws on the idea that actors involved in innovation are guided by “sociotechnical regimes” composed of practices, institutions, norms and cultural beliefs. Analysis focuses on how genome editing is emerging in different domains and whether this marks continuity or disruption of the established biotechnology regime. In conclusion, it will be argued that genome editing is best understood as a technology platform that is being powerfully shaped by this existing regime but is starting to disrupt the governance of biotechnology. In the longer term is it set to converge with other powerful technology platforms, which together will fundamentally transform the capacity to engineer life

Service robots in long-term care: a consumer-centric view

Service robots with advanced intelligence capabilities can potentially transform servicescapes. However, limited attention has been given to how consumers experiencing vulnerabilities, particularly those with disabilities, envisage the characteristics of robots’ prospective integration into emotionally-intense servicescapes, such as long-term care (LTC). We take an interdisciplinary approach conducting three exploratory studies with consumers with disabilities involving Community Philosophy, LEGO® Serious Play® and Design Thinking methods. Addressing a lack of consumer-centric research, we offer a three-fold contribution by: 1) developing a conceptualization of consumer-conceived value of robots in LTC, which are envisaged as a supporting resource offering consumers opportunities to realize value; 2) empirically evidencing pathogenic vulnerabilities as a potential value-destruction factor to underscore the importance of integrating service robots research with a service inclusion paradigm; and 3) providing a theoretical extension and clarification of prior characterizations of robots’ empathetic and emotion-related AI capabilities. Consumers with disabilities conceive robots able to stimulate and regulate emotions by mimicking cognitive and behavioral empathy, but unable to express affective and moral empathy, which is central to care experience. While providing support for care practices, for the foreseeable future service robots will not, in themselves, actualize the experience of ‘being cared for.

The social triad model: considering the deployer in a novel approach to trust in human–robot interaction

There is an increasing interest in considering, measuring, and implementing trust in human-robot interaction (HRI). New avenues in this field include identifying social means for robots to influence trust, and identifying social aspects of trust such as a perceptions of robots’ integrity, sincerity or even benevolence. However, questions remain regarding robots’ authenticity in obtaining trust through social means and their capacity to increase such experiences through social interaction with users. We propose that the dyadic model of HRI misses a key complexity: a robot’s trustworthiness may be contingent on the user’s relationship with, and opinion of, the individual or organisation deploying the robot (termed here, Deployer). We present a case study in three parts on researching HRI and a LEGO® Serious® Play focus group on care robotics to indicate how Users’ trust towards the Deployer can affect trust towards robots and robotic research. Our Social Triad model (User, Robot, Deployer) offers novel avenues for exploring trust in a social context