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Team:Edinburgh/ethics(summary)
From 2009.igem.org
Underlying Philosophy - Summary (Pro and Contras)
Personal note
During our project we had great meeting with Dr Donald Bruce from Edinethics. He was the great guy because we... played a game with him. It was really amazing.
Game we played was DEMOCS Card Game. Concept developed by Donald and others people. Main aim of this game is to introduce to people not very widespread concepts, idea, scientific fields. For example, this game is meant to be played in the pub by a group of people, say they are all members of a volleyball club. By playing this game players get knowledge about previously unknown things and scientific areas (say, synthetic biology) and exchange opinions with each other concerning ethical issues related to the game topic.
Game consists of set of cards. Each card represents fictional story which describes very common and real situtation in the topic discussed (see flash object for better idea). After the text on the card have been read to the players discussion starts and players actively exchange their opinion about possible outcomes and/or underlying reasons of the situtation described in the card. After all cards have been read and discussed, players fill in small survey, which shows their current attitude to the topic discussed during the game. Moreover, stories given in the cards could be given for homework to each person and he might do small research about given problem and make small oral presentation to all other players.
Our Team and Democs
We were beta testing set of DEMOCS concerning Synthetic Biology. Card texts were very good because they really represented the actual ethic problems around field of Synthetic Biology. What was really interesting, that even despite the fact we were all in one team our opinions about ethical underlying issues concerning texts in the cards were very different.
After we played this game our team came up with idea, that to get wider audience this game should be implemented and result in online version of DEMOCS card game. Idea is really great because such simple but effective concept as presented to the world by DEMOCS card game is perfect foundation for online interactive visual application. We started to develop this idea, but it turned out that this idea is much more global then we could expect and we didn't have enough programming resources to implement even 5% of the project in 10 weeks. We decided to stop with small flash element which represents one of lots possible implementations of cards concept.
We think that this project in future might turn out as very huge achievment of iGEM community if it will be properly implemented. Edinburgh University iGEM Team 2009 already had some discussion with supervisors about this project idea and implementation of this project might become big part of Edinburgh University iGEM Team 2010 entry. Moreover because of a huge amount of work needed to be done implementation of this idea might be considered two be split between several teams.
How do we see DEMOCS implementation
Main strength of this game is in discussion of players, so implementation mainly should concern ways of users' interaction. Users' interaction should be divided at least into two layers:
* moment-interaction what is something close to live chat, where small groups of people (say, up to 10 people) can chat with each other and discuss topics * forum interaction which might be simple conventional forum what gives to users opportunity to make some research about given topics.
Discussion is great but the second main strength which will become obvious after some time when project will get enough material to work with will be conclusions and results which could be done based on users' information and opinions left during discussion. By applying machine learning algrorithms and other approaches users (for example, scientists) would be able to make important conclusions about ethical side of their work.
Our team feels very sad that we didn't have enough time even to start working properly on such a great idea, but at least we are able to give directio to future generations of iGEMers.
Game we played was DEMOCS Card Game. Concept developed by Donald and others people. Main aim of this game is to introduce to people not very widespread concepts, idea, scientific fields. For example, this game is meant to be played in the pub by a group of people, say they are all members of a volleyball club. By playing this game players get knowledge about previously unknown things and scientific areas (say, synthetic biology) and exchange opinions with each other concerning ethical issues related to the game topic.
Game consists of set of cards. Each card represents fictional story which describes very common and real situtation in the topic discussed (see flash object for better idea). After the text on the card have been read to the players discussion starts and players actively exchange their opinion about possible outcomes and/or underlying reasons of the situtation described in the card. After all cards have been read and discussed, players fill in small survey, which shows their current attitude to the topic discussed during the game. Moreover, stories given in the cards could be given for homework to each person and he might do small research about given problem and make small oral presentation to all other players.
Our Team and Democs
We were beta testing set of DEMOCS concerning Synthetic Biology. Card texts were very good because they really represented the actual ethic problems around field of Synthetic Biology. What was really interesting, that even despite the fact we were all in one team our opinions about ethical underlying issues concerning texts in the cards were very different.
After we played this game our team came up with idea, that to get wider audience this game should be implemented and result in online version of DEMOCS card game. Idea is really great because such simple but effective concept as presented to the world by DEMOCS card game is perfect foundation for online interactive visual application. We started to develop this idea, but it turned out that this idea is much more global then we could expect and we didn't have enough programming resources to implement even 5% of the project in 10 weeks. We decided to stop with small flash element which represents one of lots possible implementations of cards concept.
We think that this project in future might turn out as very huge achievment of iGEM community if it will be properly implemented. Edinburgh University iGEM Team 2009 already had some discussion with supervisors about this project idea and implementation of this project might become big part of Edinburgh University iGEM Team 2010 entry. Moreover because of a huge amount of work needed to be done implementation of this idea might be considered two be split between several teams.
How do we see DEMOCS implementation
Main strength of this game is in discussion of players, so implementation mainly should concern ways of users' interaction. Users' interaction should be divided at least into two layers:
* moment-interaction what is something close to live chat, where small groups of people (say, up to 10 people) can chat with each other and discuss topics * forum interaction which might be simple conventional forum what gives to users opportunity to make some research about given topics.
Discussion is great but the second main strength which will become obvious after some time when project will get enough material to work with will be conclusions and results which could be done based on users' information and opinions left during discussion. By applying machine learning algrorithms and other approaches users (for example, scientists) would be able to make important conclusions about ethical side of their work.
Our team feels very sad that we didn't have enough time even to start working properly on such a great idea, but at least we are able to give directio to future generations of iGEMers.
Edinburgh University iGEM Team 2009
