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Midstream Modulation in Biotechnology Industry: Redefining What is ‘Part of the Job’ of Researchers in Industry

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Abstract

In response to an increasing amount of policy papers stressing the need for integrating social and ethical aspects in Research and Development (R&D) practices, science studies scholars have conducted integrative research and experiments with science and innovation actors. One widely employed integration method is Midstream Modulation (MM), in which an ‘embedded humanist’ interacts in regular meetings with researchers to engage them with the social and ethical aspects of their work. While the possibility of using MM to enhance critical reflection has been demonstrated in academic settings, few attempts have been made to examine its appropriateness in industry. This paper describes the outcomes of a case study aiming to find out firstly whether MM can effectively be deployed to encourage and facilitate researchers to actively include social and ethical aspects in their daily R&D practice, and secondly to what extent the integration activities could form an integral part of the engaged industrial researchers’ professional activities. Our data show that after MM, researchers display increased reflexive awareness on the social and ethical aspects of their work and acknowledge the relevance and utility of such aspects on their daily practice. Also, all participants considered actively reflecting on social and ethical aspects to be part of their work. Future research on the role of MM in industrial settings could focus on how to embed social and ethical integration as a regular part of innovation practice. We suggest that one possibility would be through aligning social and ethical aspects with innovation Key Performance Indicators.

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Notes

  1. While primarily policy makers and social sciences and humanities scholars advocate for this inclusion, also scholars from the natural sciences in the field of biotechnology have done so. See e.g. Wolpert (2007).

  2. Their original study serves as the basis for a series of MM studies through Fisher’s NSF funded Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR) project (NSF #0849101).

  3. These 5 researchers were asked to participate had the ability to ‘opt out,’ but did not reject.

  4. The project entails the design of a microbiological production process (based on renewable resources) of a sustainable component that can replace its currently petrochemically produced alternative. The complete project description remains undisclosed in accordance with the confidentiality agreement.

  5. The interview guide is given in “Appendix”. It is based on the one used by Schuurbiers (2011), who kindly provided us with his protocol.

  6. In addition to the interviews, the embedded humanist also visited the researchers in their laboratories and offices on numerous occasions, and was present at weekly research meetings. While these observations do help the embedded humanist to interpret the interview results, the additionally obtained data is not used in this paper, similar to earlier MM research.

  7. Additionally, in interview 6 the method was evaluated to allow participants to give advice on how to improve the method, to see if expectations were met and to investigate whether participants were still willing to continue to participate in the study. Participants did not make critical comments at that time and wanted to continue in this study, so we do not further elaborate on the outcome of this evaluation moment in this paper.

  8. We analysed interviews on recorded audio and transcribed segments about decision making and social and ethical aspects. Of the 60 h of interviews 20 h were transcribed, resulting in roughly 78,000 words of ad verbatim transcripts.

  9. The four additional narratives are available upon request for interested readers.

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Acknowledgments

This article is the result of a research project of the CSG Centre for Society and Life Sciences carried out within the research programme of the Kluyver Centre for Genomics of Industrial Fermentation in The Netherlands at the Delft University of Technology, Department of Biotechnology, Section Biotechnology & Society (BTS), funded by The Netherlands Genomics Initiative (NGI)/Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). We thank Dr. Daan Schuurbiers for providing us with his interview protocol and for his critical comments throughout the study and on the manuscript. Also we thank Dr. Erik Fisher for his critical feedback early on in the study and also on the manuscript. Further thanks go to the BTS-group for critically reviewing the manuscript. But most of all we thank Royal DSM N.V. for hosting this research project, and in particular our five participants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Applied Sciences, Department of Biotechnology, Section Biotechnology and Society, Delft University of Technology, Julianalaan 67, 2628 BC, Delft, The Netherlands

    Steven M. Flipse & Patricia Osseweijer

  2. CSG Centre for Society and the Life Sciences, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Steven M. Flipse & Patricia Osseweijer

  3. Kluyver Centre for Genomics of Industrial Fermentation, PO Box 5057, 2600 GA, Delft, The Netherlands

    Steven M. Flipse & Patricia Osseweijer

  4. Faculty of Applied Sciences, Science Education and Communication, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1, 2628 CJ, Delft, The Netherlands

    Maarten C. A. van der Sanden

  5. BE-Basic, Julianalaan 67, 2628 BC, Delft, The Netherlands

    Patricia Osseweijer

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  1. Steven M. Flipse
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Correspondence to Steven M. Flipse.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 7.

Table 7 Interview guide used during pre- and post-interviews
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Flipse, S.M., van der Sanden, M.C.A. & Osseweijer, P. Midstream Modulation in Biotechnology Industry: Redefining What is ‘Part of the Job’ of Researchers in Industry. Sci Eng Ethics 19, 1141–1164 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-012-9411-6

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