Author: Jonny Hankins

Jonathan's Author Bio: Co Editor of the International Handbook on Responsible Innovation, and author of Responsible Innovation, A Narrative Approach, Jonny works for the Bassetti Foundation in Milan publishing articles on innovation and responsibility on their website and in academic and trade journals and also blogging about his interests. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Responsible Innovation and member of the the Virtual Institute of Responsible Innovation

ORION MOOC for Open Science in the Life Sciences

1 Reply Jonny Hankins

Overview of the Course

I have just completed the ORION MOOC for Open Science in the Life Sciences. The course is designed to run six weeks, offering six modules, each of which takes about two hours to complete. I (more or less) completed it over a week.

The course is described as an introduction to the concept of open science. It is thorough in its design and breadth of argument and offers a lot. It is free as it has been funded through the EU HORIZON 2020 funding program.

It is primarily aimed at those working in biomedicine, life sciences and other related research fields, and is intended to help scientists to share their research with the world more effectively. it would be beneficial for anyone conducting research that produces data of any sort though, and offers a lot of information about different publishing regimes which is a topic that has regularly appeared on the blog in the past.

Course Contents

The course introduces lots of useful tools and research practices, as well as Open Science principles. It is not moderated, self paced, but offers a certificate upon completion of all of the tasks. There is plenty to take away from the experience from following the lectures and materials offered without following up on the data uploads and forum discussions required for completion though. You can pick out what is interesting for yourself.

The MOOC opens with two modules on publishing and open access, open peer review, pre-registration and registered reports. Several links are supplied offering a real-life experience for anyone wishing to try out. Licensing is explained in terms of different levels of permission to reuse materials, with several different commons forms described in great detail (all including links).

Module three is dedicated to research data management and planning, with all of the above gearing up to addressing the needs of creating a FAIR and open data approach as described in module four. FAIR stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, with much of this module dedicated to a systematic approach to data production and sharing.

Module five addresses the topics of science communication and public engagement, comparing these two fields in terms of their aims and approaches. Storytelling and prop use is shown and discussed, and citizen science is described in its broadest terms (including crowdfunding and project co-design).

The course closes with module six, dedicated to self-reflection and action, suggestions and reviews of the course itself and feedback.

Why Not?

I enjoyed this course. The communication techniques adopted are broad and really drew me in. From cartoon and comic strip type presentations to TED talks and storytelling, as well as single page overviews and power point presentations that offer overviews of the topics addressed, the pace and presentation styles kept me interested.

Why not check it out?

What would technological innovation look like if its goal wasn’t necessarily to make a profit?

1 Reply Jonny Hankins

Profit and Growth as an Aim

A simple question to ponder: What would technological innovation look like if its goal wasn’t necessarily to make a profit?

Well that presumes of course that the role of innovation is to boost the economy, which is certainly one of the claims made on many fronts.

I learned from reading the new book Responsibility Beyond Growth,  A Case For Responsible Stagnation, that the EU funds its innovation with the aim of producing economic growth within the region as part of its Innovation Union program. Innovation for growth! The aim is economic growth in terms of greater GDP across the union.

Which leads to questions about responsibility: Can innovation be responsible if it doesn’t work for economic growth? Can it be responsible if it would lead to a shrinking economy?

Well these seem like simple enough questions if we take them on face value, of course they can, but maybe not if they are funded by businesses or institutions whose aims are economic growth.

But then what about the question at the top, the question raised in the book, how would the innovation system differ if it wasn’t geared towards growth? How does innovation differ today that is not funded with these aims in mind?

Can we draw a comparison within single fields to look for similarities?

Medicine

There have long been arguments that technological developments in medicine have been driven by wealth generation. Malaria is often given as an example. One of the most damaging health issues in the world received around 3 billion US dollars a year for research, control and elimination, but this is less than the 5 billion deemed necessary to reach agreed milestones (We have to take these data on face value as I can’t guarantee they are correct).

Critics argue that this shortcoming is caused by the fact that treatment for malaria (new drugs) will not generate much profit for the global pharmaceutical industry.

If we compare this to some of the figures given for cancer treatment the figures are well over 100 billion per year. Cancer treatments are expensive and lucrative for the drug companies, so economic logic would lead them to investing more in research in this line than in others.

If we extend this thinking to global innovation then the question appears again, how would technology develop if it was decoupled from economics? Would more solutions be found for problems that are under-addressed because there is little profit in the solution (or even loss)?

It’s not such an abstract question if we think about open access publishing and the development of free software (UBUNTU as an example). Some argue that these programs are better than their more widespread cousins, precisely because they are developed by users and for users, not necessarily for shareholders. Could this become a broader argument?

The book I mentioned above goes into much greater detail. Check it out if you can.

Hacker Cultures

Leave a reply Jonny Hankins

EASST

The European Association for the Study of Science and Technology held its annual conference in August, and a veritable feast of information it turned out to be (as is their website).

In particular though I would like to point readers towards a podcast series, based upon a panel held during the conference.

The podcast series is called Hacker Cultures. From the website:

This year, Covid-19 turned most conferences virtual, so to combat Zoom-fatigue, we decided to try another format and turn a conference session into a podcast. This series comes to you from the 2020 joint Society for Social Studies of Science/European Association for the Study of Science and Technology conference, titled “Locating and Timing Matters: Significance and agency of STS in emerging worlds” which took place from August 18th-21st. Among hundreds of panels, papers and sessions, the Hacker Cultures panel rounded up all sorts of researchers who study what it is to be a hacker, and what hacking, programming, tinkering and working with computers is all about. The hosts of this podcast are Paula Bialski, who is an Associate Professor at the University of St. Gallen, and Mace Ojala, a lecturer at the IT University of Copenhagen. On-site recording and production was done by Heights Beats at Hotmilk Records. The theme song is titled “Rocky” by Paula & Karol. Funding for the editing of this podcast comes from the University of St. Gallen.

The episodes are in the style of an interview rather than a lecture, easy to follow and really interesting.

What is on Offer?

Episode 1: Morgan G. Ames – Throwback Culture: The Role of Nostalgia in Hacker Worlds
Episode 2: Minna Saariketo & Mareike Gloss – In the grey zone of hacking? Two cases in the political economy of software and the Right to Repair
 Episode 3: Annika Richterich – Forget about the learning: On (digital) creativity and expertise in hacker-/makerspaces
 Episode 4: Alex Dean Cybulski – Hacker Culture Is Everything You Don’t Get Paid For In the Information Security Industry
 Episode 5: Jeremy Grosman – Algorithmic Objects, Algorithmic Practices
 Episode 6: Stephane Couture – Hacker Culture and Practices in the Development of Internet Protocols
 Episode 7: Ola Michalec – Hacking infrastructures: understanding capabilities of Operational Technology (OT) security workers
 Episode 8: Sylvain Besencon – Securing by hacking: maintenance regimes around an end-to-end encryption standard
 Episode 9: R. Stuart Geiger & Dorothy Howard – ‘I didn’t sign up for this’: The Invisible Work of Maintaining Free/Open-Source Software Communities

Really entertaining, informative and featuring lots of well known experts, 15 to 20 minutes each, well worth a browse.