Team:Paris/EthicalReportMethods

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Methods

The theoretical approach in this report can be regarded as quite “singular”, and that singularity has to be explained. I am student in Science and Technology Studies in the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales of Paris (EHESS) and my thesis focus on practices in the field of synthetic biology. Before participating in IGEM, I worked on collaborative projects with the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity which sponsored the creation of the inter-institute Paris IGEM team, I wanted to be part of the Paris IGEM team in order to observe the team in the 2009 competition and to see how the team engineered biology and how they dealt with and interpreted the ethical aspects of synthetic biology. This participation was a very good way for me to enlighten knowledge and productions process of a team of student in synthetic biology and for the other students to reflect on ethical issues, which we were able to build on together.

With this perspective, and I am to avoid the conceit “sociological” in my observation, nevertheless this report has to be understood from the perspective “science and technology studies”, with references and concepts that are situated in that academic context. My primary goal in precisely situating my point of view is to be precise what it is not : this report is not the reflexion of a scientist about his/her own practices, but the look of a student of science and technology studies about what students of science are saying about their work.

In my daily work with the IGEM team, some important methodological questions had to be answered : I decided to use a qualitative and participant-based approach, preferring collective experience of reflexion of ethical reflexion to data. This report won't have any graphics with team-members-answers to pre-set questionnaires, instead our meetings and talks were dynamic and I decided not to constrain the scope of the discussion by my up stream reflexions. That process also permitted discussions were coexisted sociological and scientific stakes, when everyone of us were trying to find answers to our own research programs. That was, for me, the greatest benefit to my privileged access to a scientific field, having the opportunity to discussed these questions with the team.

My discussions with the team started with a series of individual conversations with almost all students of the team. Depending on student, these discussions were all very different and at the end of the first round of conversation, I sought to bring together all the different stakes and questions brought by the individual team members in a collective and dynamic reflexion process. We decided to schedule collective talks, each about one hour long and focusing an pre decided themes, in order to delimit stakes. For certain discussions, I had to make a presentation, to put into light the history of a concept, to share with the team my reading on the subject or to highlight what seemed important to me, as a sociologist. That way, I shared with the team my own system of references, they were able to know through what “regard” I appreciated their words and reflexions.

After that talks, and in keeping with the IGEM' spirit, I decided to fill the ethical part of our wiki with an abstract of the discussion blended with my analysis on them. These posts had the form of blog's posts, as a individual, local and situated analysis. This report is more formal, but I propose it to be read in parallel with those informal posts. Both of these types of writing were important to the process of creating a dynamic reflexion of the ethics of synthetic biology. While formal essays are still valuable as a way to express our analysis of any topic, social studies sometimes miss the advantages of informal reflexion (fluidity, experimentation in the writing process, different kind of discourses, vocabulary or lexicon). Both styles were a good exercise, permitting me to scour, to search different ways to explore and uncover the stakes of synthetic biology.

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