UCSC Science and Justice Program Receives National Attention

UCSC Science and Justice Program Receives National Attention
By Kara Guzman

Santa Cruz Sentinel

POSTED: 08/20/2013 05:53:05 PM PDT

SANTA CRUZ — An interdisciplinary team of professors and graduate students from UC Santa Cruz’s Science & Justice Training Program have been recognized on the national stage for their work to integrate ethical training into scientific fields.

The team recently published an article in Public Library of Science Biology, a national peer-reviewed science journal, about the need to create institutional space for the exploration of the links between science and questions of ethics and justice, and how they were able to achieve that at UCSC.

The training program, which teaches both science and humanities graduate students to integrate ethical questions into their work, is the first of its kind, according to co-director Jenny Reardon. One of the program’s goals is to inspire the growth of this type of work on a national level, said Reardon.

“We live in a world where science and technology are a part of everybody’s lives,” said Reardon, who is an associate professor in sociology and faculty affiliate in UCSC’s Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering. “What we wanted to do was build a space where scientists and engineers could come together with social scientists and humanists around areas of common concern.”

Reardon listed topics such as dam construction, fish stock management and genomics as areas where people beyond just scientists are needed to answer broader political and justice questions.

A subtle yet significant shift has occurred in the principles of the National Science Foundation, a federal agency that funds approximately 20 percent of federally supported university research, and the agency now seeks to fund research that explicitly engages the public and benefits society, according to the article.

This shift has resulted in an effort at the national level to increase science ethics education, according to assistant program director Jake Metcalf. Traditionally science ethics education is built around responsible conduct of research, or “don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t lie,” said Metcalf.

“We’re trying to expand that to say we can develop better forms of knowledge when we actually have space and funding and time to recognize the interdisciplinary nature of the problems that scientists and engineers encounter,” said Metcalf.

Along with coursework that teaches graduate students how to identify intersections between science and ethics, such as in genomics or climate change, the program offers a working group and research center, which provide an institutionalized space to explore these intersections.

Science & Justice fellow Tiffany Wise-West, a civil engineer who is completing a Ph.D. in environmental studies, said that the program helped her think beyond just engineering, and brought the social implications of her work to the foreground.

“It’s added a new dimension,” said Wise-West. “I had not thought in that way before.”

A key part of the program is encouraging scientists to step away from the “publish or perish” pressure and take the time to reflect on these broader issues. Reardon said she sees a long-standing competitive culture within the scientific community that encourages sacrificing personal time to quickly churn out scholarly articles.

“That’s why I think these questions of justice are important,” said Reardon. “It encourages us to think about what life is about, what is the good life and what is the place of knowledge and knowledge production.”

Science and Justice Training Program explores ethics of scientific research

Science and Justice Training Program explores ethics of scientific research

Founders and participants outline program in ‘PLOS Biology’

By Guy Lasnier

Jenny Reardon is an associate professor of sociology and co-director of the Science and Justice Training Program. Co-director Karen Barad is professor of feminist studies and history of consciousness.

A subtle but significant shift in how national science policy makers regard the outcomes of scientific research has created opportunities for innovative programs such as the Science and Justice Training Program (SJTP) at UC Santa Cruz.

The interdisciplinary program, within UCSC’s Science and Justice Research Center, trains graduate students to explore the effects and impacts of their research on society. Writing recently in a scientific journal, members of the training program, co-directed by Jenny Reardon, associate professor of sociology, and Karen Barad, professor of feminist studies, outline the UCSC effort that was founded in 2010 with a National Science Foundation grant.

The article “Experiments in Collaboration: Interdisciplinary Graduate Education in Science and Justice” appears on the community page of the July 30 issue of PLOS Biology.

“In a world increasingly shaped by science and technology, the SJTP aims to offer one pathway for science and engineering to connect to social issues and public concerns in a more practical, substantive, and thoughtful way,” the authors write.

Although policy changes over the past 20 years have led to an increased awareness of the impact of science on society, little direction is provided on how to proceed. That has created “an unexpected and underexploited benefit,” the authors write. “Where there is a mandate with little guidance, there is also an opportunity to innovate.”

At UCSC that means increased ethics education requirements for graduate students and a training program to deliver it. It means scientists and engineers working with colleagues in the humanities, arts, and social sciences.

As an example, the authors cite two physics students working on solar greenhouse technology for industrial applications. They had hoped their technology also would be useful to and embraced by small-scale organic farmers.

However, after interviewing farmers using techniques learned in an SJTP research methods seminar, they learned the farmers wanted nothing to do with high-tech approaches. This prompted the researchers to rethink who might benefit from their work.

The goal is “not to turn scientists into social scientists or humanities scholars or vice versa,” the authors write. “Rather, it is to create opportunities for graduate students and other SJTP members to gather around common objects and concerns (e.g., a greenhouse, climate change, or the use of racial categories in biomedical research.”

Also contributing to the article were Jacob Metcalf, a postdoctoral fellow for the training program; along with graduate student fellows Ian Carbone, Martha Kenney, Jennifer Liss Ohayon, Derek Padilla, Miriam Olivera, Kate Richerson, and Tiffany Wise-West.

Andrew Mathews co-authors article on the contributions of anthropology to understanding climate change

SJRC Director Andrew Mathews contributed to a recently published Perspectives piece in Nature Climate Change (pdf here) detailing how anthropologists can contribute to understanding the social and political dynamics of climate change. In this piece, Barnes et al. identify three types of insights anthropologists are well suited to provide.

First, the discipline draws attention to the cultural values and political relations that shape climate-related knowledge creation and interpretation and that form the basis of responses to continuing environmental changes. These insights come from the in-depth fieldwork that has long been the hallmark of anthropology. The second contribution is an awareness of the historical context underpinning contemporary climate debates — a result of archaeologists’ and environmental anthro- pologists’ interest in the history of society–environment interactions. The third is anthropology’s broad, holistic view of human and natural systems, which highlights the multiple cultural, social, political and economic changes that take place in our societies. Societal dynamics, as drivers of change, always interact with, and often outweigh, climate change — an issue that needs recognition for the success of public policies.

The authors note the challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration that Science & Justice has also worked to address. Varied temporal and geographic scales, differing approaches to qualitative and quantitative work, and contrasting commitments of the values of specificity and generalization for understanding phenomena can sometimes put social and natural sciences at cross purposes. However, when gathered around shared and pressing problems, the friction between disciplines can be made productive rather than detrimental or competitive. They write,

Ever more serious challenges to scientific understandings of climate change and policy responses — in both domestic and international political arenas — make the climate science and policy community more open to inputs from the social sciences. This Perspective argues that anthropology could play a central role in this, by offering methods to access the social, cultural and political processes that shape climate debates. Just as anthropologists can learn from climate science about the changing environmental conditions we live in, so too can climate scientists learn from anthropological research.

Science & Justice aims to foster just such cross-disciplinary collaboration and literacy, bringing together multiple forms of expertise to address major problems in contemporary science and technology.

S&J Training Program Fellow joins delegation in DC to advocate for more graduate training funding

SJTP Fellow and Environmental Studies doctoral student Tiffany Wise-West filed this report from a lobbying trip to Washington, DC with the “UC in DC” program. The statements made in this piece are her own opinions and not those of any UC-affiliated advocacy group.

In late May, 2013 a delegation from UCSC joined other UC campus delegations for UC in DC day, advocating to Congress for strong and sustained federal funding of graduate research and education. Over 26,000 graduate researchers are partially supported by the $3.1 billion in federal research funding annually, representing two-thirds of total research funding awarded to UCs each year. With over 7% of the nation’s PhDs being awarded from the UC system, UC leads the way in building the intellectual capital necessary to fill the 2.6 million jobs in California projected to require advanced degree by year 2020.

The UCSC delegation meets with Representative Sam Farr (CA-20th District) to discuss the consequences of budget cuts on graduate student training.

Graduate training, long a focal area of the Science and Justice Research Center, will be impacted by cuts to federal discretionary funding in the next fiscal year as a result of the sequestration mechanism put into law by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Additional discretionary cuts to research, education, and health programs will be accomplished in future years by decreasing the total funds available for annual appropriations. Without a change to or repeal of the sequestration law, the following impacts to graduate education will go into effect:

 · Deep cuts through year 2021 to key agencies funding graduate research opportunities such as the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, USDA, NASA, Department of Defense, and others.

· Reductions in student aid support will occur as the number of Pell Grants awarded decrease through year 2021 and interest rates for new federal students loans could increase from 3.4 to 6.8% after July 2013.

Obviously failure to “build the brain trust” has the potential to stifle technological innovation and could be economically damaging for the State. Chancellor Blumenthal, in his Open Forum piece in the May 9, 2013 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, frames this issue in terms of UCSC’s cancer genome research and asks how we, as a society, cannot afford this research that is so clearly in the public’s interest. Thus, crucial social justice questions are also associated with the current funding situation. Societal human health impacts aside, the inability to maintain or increase funding to graduate programs and grant-making agencies will have dire impacts on prospective graduate students from disadvantaged backgrounds or communities with respect to affordability and accessibility of healthcare.

Moreover, as Senator Harkin’s (D-Iowa) Education Policy Advisor pointed out, the Senator believes that education should never be treated as a discretionary expense but rather always speaks of it in terms of an investment in a self-perpetuating source of innovation, an economic driver and equalizer. As long as Congress thinks of educational funding as an “expense” vs. an “investment” and continues to make choices that prohibit pathways to advanced degrees, generations of Americans may accept the notion that advanced degrees are simply “out of reach” and be dissuaded from pursuing them.

So, what are our options? Outside of aggressive advocacy with Congress to improve the situation through legislative means, UC delegates informed Senator Feinstein (D-CA) that UC is working to enhance early and robust alumni contribution campaigns and foster public-private partnerships in research funding as a means to deal with continual uncertainty and reductions in funding. While these actions can make significant contributions, they do not begin to reach the order of magnitude required to offset the divestment of federal funding in graduate research and education. Congressional representatives from districts in which UCSC is located all explicitly support UC’s graduate research funding agenda. But with such a divided Congress, it is unlikely that legislative action will succeed in maintaining or increasing funding levels.

The next opportunity to weigh in on this issue is at the state level by contacting your legislator to support the increases proposed for UC in Governor Brown’s proposed, revised state budget that was released on May 14, 2013 and will be voted on by the legislature on June 14, 2013.

 

 

When does science become justice? Scientific evidence, pesticides and food system justice

Tuesday May 28, 2013

4:00-6:00PM

Engineering 2, 599

Panel guests:

Tyrone Hayes, UC Berkeley

Jill Harrison, Colorado-Boulder

Emily Marquez, Pesticide Action Network of North America

At the heart of disputes over pesticide use in agriculture are questions of evidence. Whose evidence is to be trusted? When causal relations between pesticides and human illness or ecological harm are disputed, who decides on their continued use? Is it appropriate for regulators to take into account matters of political economy and social justice when regulating agricultural practices or are there plainly empirical criteria of risk for regulators to use? This panel will bring together a social scientist, an activist organization, a natural scientist, and a pesticide regulator. We will search for shared insights into the meeting of scientific knowledge and democratic governance of food systems, giving credence to the positions of the many stakeholders in food systems—farmers, workers, neighbors and eaters alike.

 

Putting Earthquake Prediction on Trial: Lessons from the 2009 L’Aquila Earthquake

In spite of recent advances, predicting earthquakes remains difficult and uncertain, challenging scientists both to predict and to communicate the probability of earthquakes to policymakers and to the general public. In October, 2012, seven Italian earthquake scientists were found guilty of manslaughter for their role in failing to communicate the risk of a possible earthquake, shortly before a powerful 2009 earthquake killed more than 300 people in the city of L’Aquila, Italy. This trial has become an international cause celebre; in today’s event, Professor Susan Schwartz (Earth and Planetary Sciences, UCSC) will talk about the state of current knowledge in earthquake prediction, and about her experience of communicating this to multiple audiences in Costa Rica. Professor Massimo Mazzotti, (History, UC Berkeley) will talk about the political and institutional context which led to the seven scientists’ being put on trial, and how their conviction was affected by popular understandings of what scientists and the Italian state should have done.

Following the event, there will be a reception in the Science & Justice Research Center with refreshments and featuring works from our artists in residence.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013 | 4:00-6:00 pm | Oakes Mural Room

Andrew Mathews receives the Harold & Margaret Sprout Award for recent book

Andrew S. Mathews, Director of the Science & Justice Research Center and Associate Professor of Anthropology, received the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award  from the International Studies Association’s Environment Section for his 2011 book Instituting Nature: Authority, Expertise, and Power in Mexican Forests (MIT Press). The Harold and Margaret Sprout Award recognizes the best book in the study of international environmental problems in the preceding two years. Mathew’s book traces the hundred year history of how the science of forestry arrived in the forests of Mexico and was transformed by indigenous communities who live and work in forests.

Bruce Ames — Nutritional deficiencies and trace synthetic chemicals: Putting health risks into perspective

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Humanities 1, Room 210

Bruce N. Ames (Senior Scientist, Nutrition and Metabolism Center, Children’s Hospital of Oakland Research Institute (CHORI) and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UC Berkeley)

Bruce Ames’ research in nutritional biochemistry has examined exposure to health risks from a number of perspectives. Early in his career he developed the Ames test, an inexpensive method to measure the mutagenic and carcinogenic potential of chemicals which has become an essential tool of contemporary biochemistry. Although it contributed to public fears about synthetic chemicals, the common carcinogenic effects of ‘natural’ chemicals led Dr. Ames to assert that these fears were largely unfounded or exaggerated. More recently, his research has focused on the hidden biochemical costs of vitamin deficiencies, which are widespread even in wealthy nations. His triage theory posits that the human body protects against short term consequences of essential vitamin deficiencies by reducing the production of longevity proteins that are markers of long term health. This discovery led to his lab’s creation of CHORI-Bars, nutritional food bars that provide high densities of essential vitamins and minerals with very few calories. Preliminary research indicates that resolving nutritional deficiencies in this fashion can have positive effects on a wide range of health problems in wealthy and poor economies alike.

In this presentation, Dr. Ames will discuss the triage theory and what it means for the relative risks of competing nutritional strategies. Have food system reformers significantly over-stated the risks of synthetic chemicals to human health? Does the emphasis on reducing synthetic chemicals actually lead to more negative health outcomes, such as cancer, by making fresh fruits and vegetables more expensive? Can highly-engineered foods such as CHORI-Bars provide the least expensive solutions to a wide variety of negative health outcomes?

Jenny Reardon’s op-ed sparks conversation about medical and genetic privacy

Lung tissue samples taken from the body of a soldier who died of influenza in 1918 are pictured in an undated photo. Credit: Armed Forces Institute Of Pathol, NYT

SJRC Co-Director Jenny Reardon published an Op-Ed in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 2, 2013, “Should patients understand that they are research subjects?” In the article she recounts visiting a physician at UC San Francisco and not being able to parse the standard informed consent to having tissues and/or medical data used anonymously in medical research. At the heart of problem is a confusing mix of U.S. case law that denies ownership over one’s bodily tissues once they have left one’s body, medical privacy standards that require providers and researchers to inform you that they may use the tissues for research without directly requesting permission, and the speed at which medical advances are occurring. Given these conditions, it is actually imposible to know what one is consenting to when one signs these ubiquitous forms, making that ‘consent’ tenuous at best. Reardon, whose research examines the social, ethical political dynamics of biomedicine and genomics, notes that even experts like her are in the dark about how their tissues might be used in the near future, and recent research has shown that while researchers may aspire to keeping tissues and data anonymous it is no longer technically feasible.

I have spent two decades studying this minefield, and even I had a hard time making sense of what it might mean for these researchers to have access to my samples. For example, UCSF would be required by law to make my samples “anonymous,” yet research published in Science the day of my visit revealed that even anonymous samples can be reidentified. Does this mean that information gained from my samples might be linked back to me?

Reardon cites recent developments in patient consent at the University of Washington medical centers as a model for UCSF and other providers to adopt. At the University of Washington, patients are able to opt out of research without their physicians knowing, and thus not feel as if they are risking their access to care. Additionally, Reardon supports giving patients more rights to affirmatively opt in to research whenever their tissues or data is desired by researchers.

The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board also published an editorial in support of Reardon’s proposal. The editors suggest that as the US Department of Health and Human Services revises its standards for medical consent, they should keep these principles in mind:

— Patients may not have legal “property,” but they still have rights. Regulators should err on the side of more patient disclosure, not less.

— Compensation is going to be a big question going forward, but it doesn’t have to be monetary. If there’s no longer a way to provide patients with anonymity, will they have free or reasonably priced access to medical developments that come about as a result of their cells or DNA?

— Standardized disclosures should be encouraged throughout the industry. Different institutions have widely varying policies. Patients don’t deserve to be confused.

In response to these two pieces, UCSF’s Elizabeth A. Boyd, associate vice chancellor for ethics and compliance, and Daniel Dohan, associate professor of health policy and social medicine, noted that the success of medical research rests on relationships of trust between physicians, researchers and patients. The development of personalized medicine, which promises to revolutionize health care by tailoring treatments to individuals, will require willingness on the part of patients to provide samples for research and testing. Boyd and Dohan note that UCSF supports revising consent standards, and cite the recent creati0n of EngageUC, an initiative on the part of UC physicians and faculty to develop new comprehensive guidelines.

We want to develop a consent process and a set of policies that will help ensure that all patients – whether they have volunteered for specific research, are donating leftover tumor samples, or are being admitted to the hospital for care – truly understand what information may be gleaned from their samples, how that information will be used, whom it will be shared with, and what privacy controls can – and cannot – be guaranteed.

Reardon and the rest of the UCSC Science & Justice Research Center will continue to contribute to these conversations.

 

Jenny Reardon Awarded Brocher Foundation Residency

Jenny Reardon, Associate Professor of Sociology, Founder and Co-Director of the Science & Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz was awarded a Residency with The Brocher Foundation to write her upcoming book The Post-Genomic Condition: Ethics, Justice and Knowledge After the Genome.

The Brocher Foundation is a Swiss non profit law Foundation offering visiting researchers the opportunity to stay at the Brocher Centre in a peaceful park on shores of Lake Geneva, to write a book – articles – an essay or a PhD thesis. The visiting positions are a unique occasion to meet other researchers from different disciplines and countries as well as experts from numerous International Organizations & Non Gouvernemental Organizations based in Geneva such as WHO, WTO, WIPO, UNHCR, ILO, WMA, ICRC.

Since 2007 the Brocher Centre has hosted more than a hundred junior and senior researchers from all around the world for stays ranging from one to six months.

Residencies with the Brocher Centre give researchers (PhD students to Professors) the opportunity to work on projects on the ethical, legal and social implications for humankind of recent medical research and new technologies.