Ethical, legal and societal aspects

Key legal questions (ownership, patenting) as well as topics such as the common good/open source debate, biopiracy-biocolonialisation debates, and questions about global equity will be adresses in NorZymeD. ELSA shall interact closely with the rest of the project. Legal and ethical questions will be identified in close collaboration with all participants and then subject to legal and ethical research. Capacity building (through dedicated workshops and communications) will be an important part of the ELSA in NorZymeD.

By Ågot Aakra

The ELSA of NorZymeD

How can ELSA work be beneficial to NorZymeD?

- Identifying and resolving concrete ethical and legal issues
- Formulating and discussing the social value of NorZymeD
- Providing an opportunity for everyone to discuss broader topics
- Making the project «better»??
- To promote scientific robustness, scientists should strive for a critical/sceptical/agnostic attitude towards factual claims
- To promote social robustness, ELSA research should adopt a critical/sceptical/agnostic attitude towards scientists’ value claims
- Main work approach: discussion
- Focus on process; considerable freedom

Published 13. December 2017 - 11:09 - Updated 27. April 2018 - 10:49

Interview (in Norwegian) with NorZymeD's ELSA expert, prof. Roger Strand, Univ of Bergen:

What is ELSA?

A 21st century view of science must not only embrace the wider societal context, but be prepared for the context to begin to talk back.
Reliable knowledge will no longer suffice, at least in those cases, where the consensuality reached within the scientific community will fail to impress those outside.
In a 21st century view of science, more will be demanded from science: a decisive shift towards a more extended notion of scientific knowledge, namely a shift towards socially robust or context-sensitive knowledge. (Helga Nowotny 1999)

Context of discovery: novel
Context of justification: valid
Context of application: safe
Context of implication: robust

(H. Nowotny, P. Scott & M. Gibbons: Re-Thinking Science, Polity 2001)