Could and should research and innovation be responsible? The question is now asked, especially in Europe, with regard to the concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI). However, research and responsibility do not seem to belong to the same world, nor have the same requirements. The issue of knowledge versus ethics is almost as old as Plato’s opinion when he felt that science was coming to a consensus more easily than ethics, or to put it another way that ethical disagreements could separate the best of friends. Things have changed since the end of World War II. The errors of this disastrous period, and also the power of new technologies, sometimes accompanied by controversies broadcasting in the public sphere, have started to blur this separation between science and ethics.

A closer look shows that research and innovation already comply with many types of responsibilities that we will need to explain. What is new with RRI is that the choice of research and the way it is conducted is now implemented more reactively (responsiveness). If this is already true for innovation, research must still strive to improve its responsiveness, both for these choices and means.

However, another form of responsibility, specific to research ethics within the framework of projects financed by public funds, particularly European, is not endowed with reflections on RRI. Besides, how did such a conception come so abruptly to some like a thunderclap?

The 20th Century witnessed an unparalleled development of science and technology, and also the emergence of new issues and challenges. Climate change, discovery of nuclear energy, bovine spongiform encephalopathy scandal or exploitation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have resulted in mistrust and, in the latter case, sharp resistance from European citizens. These controversies and upheavals have increased the need to think of new ways to support and “govern” technological and scientific development.

In the 1970s, various technology assessment (TA) methods were developed to guide technoscientific progress, help governments to better anticipate the social consequences of science and technology and enable citizens to better understand developments. Human and social sciences (HSS) researchers, sometimes in the form of expert committees, have been assigned the task to identify ethical issues and suggest possible answers. Leading bodies of this movement, including institutions such as the Office of Technology Assessment, created in 1972 in the United States, the Danish Board of Technology (created in 1986) or the European Parliamentary Technology Assessment (created in 1990) were established, with the task of advising parliamentary institutions faced with new scientific and technical challenges. These tools designed on the basis of critical reflection of selected experts helped to determine, in addition to purely technical assessment, some previously neglected ethical issues, and to suggest elements of response that could assist authorities in their decision making. Also based on expert assessment, bioethics committees were formed to try to discuss difficult issues in the (bio) medical field. These committees often including lawyers, theologians, religious experts of recognized denominations and medical field actors strive to offer a serious reflection on complex subjects usually found at the borderline between life and death.

However, the 1990s added new concerns: the need to include civil society and involve various stakeholders. The hegemony of assessments performed by experts, ethics committees or analysis from social sciences researchers has become an object of criticism. What has been challenged is not so much the moral validity of efforts that these mechanisms mobilize, but the fact that they emanate from an overhanging perspective, impervious to how ordinary citizens assess technologies or research. For this reason, these experts’ analyses are now seen as insufficient resources to appraise the social acceptability and ethical desirability of science and technology. Since ethics committees only inadequately represent and reflect values and value systems of the members of society, they could not be the only source of fundamental normative decisions.

Eventually, TA methods have evolved to integrate participatory approaches in an attempt to incorporate the progress of science and technology in a more democratic framework. This is illustrated, for example, by mechanisms such as PTA or interactive technology assessment. These mechanisms enable society actors not only to discuss but also at least test their values, or other moral elements (such as their moral intuitions, principles or standards on which they base) and even, in some cases, to shape the development of technology. Inclusion becomes a way to expand all the normative elements on which decision making is based (stakeholders value systems and not only of experts presumably representing them) or more generally to represent different areas of expertise.

Moreover, inclusion mechanisms help to reveal value conflicts or normative systems differences that exist between social actors – even in cases where individual responses to technological change simply show indifference. By revealing the various “valuations” (as seen by Dewey) of individuals, it becomes possible to initiate conflict resolution processes, without the actual need to aim at consensus only.

This new “social contract” between science, technology and society [OWE 13] has become a central element of science governance, presumed to reduce business failures, public reticence and major environmental, ethical or social damages. More generally, the idea prevailed that these new forms of governance could increase economic efficiency and above all political legitimacy, social acceptability and ethical desirability of science and technology. Different directions were followed, starting from different variants of TA, constructive TA and real-time TA, moving toward value sensitive approaches (value sensitive design), and passing through risk assessment, precautionary approaches or new and emerging science and technology approaches. It is also worth mentioning that in addition to these participatory approaches, some reductionist conceptions of ethics persisted, embodied by assessment of Ethical, Legal, Social Impacts or Aspects (i.e. ELSI or ELSA approaches) that emerged in the 2000s during the controversy over the development of genomics.

The RRI concept is therefore based on a long tradition of theories and practices promoting in various ways science and technology governance, which is not exclusively attributed to experts and decision makers. There are two other theoretical corpuses, although most RRI may not make reference to them, which equally opened the way for a method of considering ethics and responsibility, in the shaping of technology and innovation: corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable development. CSR offers a framework for reflection to corporate stakeholders and a set of standards to take into consideration, in addition to their main goal – achieving profit – their impact on society, stakeholders involved, their environment and to adapt their actions¹. Sustainable development brings together a heterogeneous set of theoretical practices and approaches that agree on the need to conserve resources (natural, human and social) threatened by our production, consumption and current trade practices.

Based on the participative turn that we discussed above and within the tradition of a more democratic governance of science, the idea of “responsible research and innovation” emerged [OWE 12, OWE 13a, OWE 13b, HEL 03, GUS 06, VON 11, VON 12, VON 13, STI 12, GRU 11]. This new concept was first introduced in the EC, in May 2011, during a workshop organized at the Directorate General for Research in Brussels. Shortly after (on May 23–24, 2011) another international conference, which was held at the Embassy of France in London, also gave way for a discussion on the bases of European approach to RRI, centered on the early involvement of civil society and the alignment of science and technology with the values of society.

RRI has been presented as a central element of research strategy program for 2020 (H2020) and several research projects have been funded to explore the concepts and tools². Meanwhile, the normative assessment of European Commission’s scientific projects remains committed to ethical reviews (ER) and is not yet organized around RRI. ER, discussed later, correspond to the process by which scientific projects are self-assessed and evaluated by ethics experts before validation. These evaluations are structured around several ethical themes (bioethics, ICT, experiments on human beings, etc.). The details will be outlined in Chapter 1.

Since moving from one to the other is sometimes mentioned, studying the comparison between these ER practiced by the EC for scientific projects and RRI concept stands as one of the primary objectives of this work. With regard to this, Chapter 1 details the content of ER such as currently designed by the EC. We shall see that these ER are very close to law since they mobilize quasi-legal standards (related to national and international legal standards of several levels of significance) that researchers must observe. We shall notice that even if they cover a wider range of issues (such as the relationship, essentially ethical, of human beings with their environment or toward animals), part of the reflection and justifications of the ethical work is still left hanging. In some way, they remain on the ethical sphere threshold. They could therefore be more responsible by moving from a solely legal responsibility to moral responsibility, We could understand both parts of the title of our book, research ethics and innovation, as responsible in the title of this book.

Chapter 2 presents and analyzes two different approaches to RRI proposed by the EC; on the one hand, in the form of six pillars, and through academic literature, and on the other hand, in the form of five conditions. By entering into the details of these approaches and what they promote, it becomes possible to differentiate ER and RRI. Moreover, this chapter discusses at length one of the essential conditions/pillars of RRI on which all its promoters agree: the involvement of stakeholders and civil society members in research and innovation. However, we see that this pillar raises many challenges, primarily related to underdetermination of theory presently affecting the concept of participation within RRI approaches. Moreover, participation and deliberation are often poorly differentiated, the specific mechanisms through which “social values” can influence the development of research and innovation are left in the shadows and the criteria for assessing the quality of a deliberative process are ignored by RRI proponents. We defend the idea that a detour through deliberation theory (philosophy and political theory) may be useful in better thinking inclusion within RRI and contours of deliberation.

Chapters 3 and 4 attempt to fill other blind spots of RRI approaches: although the concept of “responsibility” is at the center of these approaches, there is no reflection about this concept. In effect, for the moment, the literature on RRI is based on conditions and/or objectives that innovation and research processes must meet and pursue. Yet, no study actually discusses what responsibility really means.

Chapter 3 presents 10 conceptions of responsibility that can be put forward by moral philosophy and completely discusses the first three of these conceptions. From a distinction between negative and positive meanings, we analyze the limitations of interpretations of responsibility based mainly on fear of punishment (as in the case of criminal culpability). Using several examples, we also look at the possible links between individual and collective responsibility.

Chapter 4 then proceeds with a detailed discussion of the remaining interpretations of responsibility (mostly positive) to show how they can be useful to RRI approaches. Beyond the only issue of positive versus negative, this will involve suggesting some avenues for reflection regarding possible links between different conceptions to help the various RRI actors to develop their own interpretation of responsibility.

Finally, Chapter 5 involves testing RRI and particularly its governance mechanisms through several examples. First, we analyze four scientific projects (European and French) regarding their relationship to ethics, governance tools, conception of responsibility and inclusion mechanisms, which they do or do not mobilize. These examples illustrate different relationships to responsibility and various inclusion levels and quality. Second, we shall discuss two previous deliberative experiences in order to clarify what may work for RRI and also the difficulties encountered by concrete projects when seeking to involve stakeholders or ordinary citizens. The concept of RRI is sometimes considered an achievable goal, or an oxymoron, because economic and technological forces at work in innovation and research dynamics would prevent any possibility of real and argued ethical debate on responsibility. This chapter aims at showing how the oxymoron could be dissolved and by what mechanisms.

Before getting to the heart of the matter, it would be necessary to make one last comment on the terms “innovation” and “research”. The two processes feed off each other. They are however distinguished by several important aspects from the perspective of responsibility. In effect, their temporality is not the same. Research time, which is less connected to the need for the marketing of a product, is sometimes much longer than that of innovation. Moreover, time which corresponds to the evaluation of research can itself also be very long. Taking GMOs, for example, the time required for a robust understanding of the impacts of these technologies on the environment and health is not the same for their production (innovation). In addition, the ethical assessment time required to research their long-term in situ impacts also often exceeds that of innovation. This work generally takes both processes into account. However, since the work specifically provides an analysis on how the EC assesses and supports funded scientific projects, it does not discuss in detail the specific characteristics of innovation and their implication for a conception of responsibility³.