Science and Innovation

You have worked for years in the field of science and technology studies (STS). What brought you to this field?

I trained and completed my doctorate in philosophy of science, in the late 80s and early 90s, at the UB. Just then, at that time, a large group of researchers from many countries, mainly from Europe and the United States, came to the conclusion that to understand the complicated social role of science and technology, an interdisciplinary and more empirical approach was needed (based on studies of scientific and technological practices in real cases). All this was the origin of Science & Technology Studies (STS) which, in a short time, built a vision of the study of these two fields that was very far from traditional myths. Upon completing my doctorate, I had the opportunity to go to the Netherlands, to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship at Maastricht University, with one of the founders of the STS, Professor Wiebe E. Bijker, with whom I collaborated closely for 3 years.

The Catalan Association for Science and Technology Studies (STS-CAT) was created to promote research in these fields in Catalonia. What role can it play in the public debate on innovation and society, and in scientific and technological policies?

STS-CAT was created with two basic objectives: on the one hand, to promote the interdisciplinary study of science and technology, and on the other, to improve communication and exchange in this field, increase its visibility for the general public and promote its relevance for the development of public policies.

STS studies, as is already happening in other countries, can be an important tool for designing more precise and informed science and technology policy plans. They are very useful for identifying and analyzing the social and ethical consequences of scientific and technological research – something urgent in the field of Artificial Intelligence -, for evaluating the role of knowledge in politics – often a source of controversy, as happened in 2020 in the context of the coronavirus -, for promoting citizen participation in these decisions – not only of the general public, but also of various agents of civil society – and for reconsidering public funding of scientific research taking into account all its social return.

Barcelona has established itself as a hub of science and innovation, and stands out in areas such as biomedicine or supercomputing. What are the city’s strengths and challenges in this area from your perspective?

Indeed, Barcelona (and by extension its surroundings) has become a very relevant hub for some areas of research, such as biomedicine, and is home to unique infrastructures and facilities such as the Alba Synchrotron or the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre. However, this should not make us forget that both Catalonia and Spain are experiencing a situation of public and private underfunding for research, compared to other European states.

On the other hand, biomedical research is concentrated in the hospital sector: with the focus directed at clinical trials, often mediated by pharmaceutical companies, and certain critical illnesses. Perhaps we should balance this biological approach, and pour many more resources into research into other aspects of health (psychosocial, community, environmental, prevention) that can also have a very great impact.

Likewise in the field of computing, and despite the investment made in unique infrastructures, the various research groups in Artificial Intelligence feel a bit forgotten. All these facilities are important but in research, the people who dedicate themselves to them are perhaps even more so.

And finally, I should add that the research funding model in Catalonia is also very concentrated in a few centers (such as those in the CERCA program, for example) while researchers from public universities, for the most part, show high performance but receive very little aid. In fact, in Catalonia there is currently no strictly speaking any funding program for R&D projects, beyond state calls. This is an anomaly, especially considering the countries around us.

In the current context of accelerated technological advances, do you see society as sufficiently prepared to critically evaluate the effects of all this innovation? What can be done to improve understanding in this regard?

The idea that the public, in general, is not prepared to face these challenges has been widely questioned, precisely from Science & Technology Studies (STS). It is called, specifically, the deficit model: which is the idea that people do not have enough knowledge to get involved in decisions about science and technology; that they need more information or training.

The truth, however, is that many studies suggest that the concept of public in general is somewhat misleading. Rather, there are plural publics, and often when certain groups feel very challenged (as affected, or interested; think, for example, of patient associations), they develop high levels of knowledge. Other works also show that even more relevant than all this information is the existence of true participatory models in decision-making in the field of science and technology, initiatives that are not very present here. STS studies have analyzed mechanisms of this type (citizen conferences or consensus conferences) where citizens, and especially civil society actors, interact, on equal terms, with politicians and experts.

Apart from this, the dominant or widespread view of science and technology is still very much marked by old stereotypes. One of them is technological determinism: which is the idea that this development impacts society but that society can do very little to influence it. In the end, it is a fatalistic view of this technology, which is also very present when talking about Artificial Intelligence, for example. Or another that science and technology are neutral, in the sense that everything depends on how they are used. STS studies provide very valuable antidotes against these various myths and serve to provide contingency to this aspect or to highlight all the values ​​that condition research (in biomedicine, for example, a very patriarchal view of human biology has prevailed).

How do you think digital platforms are changing the way society understands and accesses science?

Two decades ago, the idea that the internet would soon allow citizens (and scientists) to access all information for free and very quickly became widespread. Based on what I have called the deficit model, it was believed that all this would make the general public adopt a more favorable position towards science and technology. At least, the current situation is not quite like this, far from it. The networks have promoted the growth of denialism and disinformation. It is also known that some of these campaigns have been planned in a structural way and financed by some industrial lobbies (this is the phenomenon that from STS, we call agnotology: the systematic creation of ignorance).

This has been, in part, caused by the fact that information alone is not enough: attitudes towards science and technology are actually mediated by other factors (such as religious beliefs, politics, emotions, or social experiences). And STS have also demonstrated in many ways that ultimately technology is not neutral. Digital platforms – like any technology – are always designed based on values ​​and interests that do not always coincide with those of their users. To give two examples, Wikipedia or Facebook respond to very different values ​​and objectives that ultimately end up being translated into the design of their functionalities.

Disruptive technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence or biotechnology, have a strong social impact. How do you think we should address their risks and opportunities from a social perspective?

From the STS the notion of ‘disruptive technology’ is treated with some suspicion. There is a tendency to always think that those most important technologies are the last to arrive (something we have called innovocentrism). And that, in addition, it is always high technology (sophisticated and complex). The technological historian David Edgerton, on the other hand, wonders what has had greater social relevance in the 20th century, the condom or the airplane? In regular collections of disruptive technologies, jet planes appear, but never the condom. And yet it is possible to argue that its impact on the emotional and social lives of many millions of people, on demography and also on health has been greater than that of the aeronautical industry.

That said, often when talking about the risks associated with some technologies or their social fit, there is a tendency to minimize this issue to certain ethical uses. If we think about Artificial Intelligence, many current discussions revolve around those contexts where it would be legal or ethical to use it. This overlooks some important aspects. On the one hand, the biases of AI are more related to the way in which the systems are designed and the data used to train them, than to their context of use. And on the other, we always tend to think that these technologies, due to their immaterial quality, are much more sustainable. But the truth is that AI is not in an ethereal cloud, but in industrial buildings that require large energy, hydrological, mineral and also human resources. An author in the field of STS, Kate Crawford, has included this entire topic in her book Atlas of AI (Ned ediciones, 2023). This is a good example of how to comprehensively evaluate the risks and opportunities surrounding a specific technology.

Growing quantum knowledge challenges the laws of Newtonian physics and expands the mental framework. Robotics and AI raise substantial doubts about what it means to be human. Will science and philosophy touch again in the 21st century?

Science has never been an activity isolated from philosophy or other political and social concerns. If we think of great scientists in history (Isaac Newton, Marie Curie or Albert Einstein) their activity was also closely linked to other religious, philosophical or political issues, and they often insisted on it. On the other hand, great philosophers have always been very close to the science of their time.

Modernity, on the other hand, as Bruno Latour, one of the founders of STS, has shown, has instituted the belief that science (which speaks of nature) is something separate (and must be isolated) from philosophical or political questions (which speak of society), despite the constant interaction between both areas having always been very deep. It is in fact new in history that there is a clear separation in education between sciences and engineering, on the one hand, and humanities and social sciences on the other. It is a situation with very little meaning that is very negative for both sides. At least there is a growing interest on the part of engineering schools, especially, to access certain humanities subjects. The opposite happens much less, and we can even see from the humanities how a certain ignorance about science and technology is promoted.

Now it seems to us that with robotics, AI or genetic engineering we have to rethink what we are humans or what we consider human, but throughout history science and technology, as social products, have continuously promoted these kinds of debates. Rather than rethinking the human, perhaps what is needed are new frameworks of thought.

Collaboration between disciplines is vital to understanding the effects of technology. How can philosophers, sociologists, scientists and engineers work together to build more responsible innovation?

One of the original objectives of the STS was to promote these collaborations between various disciplines that have traditionally had as their research objective in science (and also in technology). For a long time they have worked behind each other and have marked solid boundaries between them. And in this, the STS have indeed been successful: they have shown that this collaboration can be feasible and very fruitful. For example, Professor Bijker, is a physical engineer, who did a doctorate in philosophy, and ended up building an entire model of analysis of technological development with a sociological aspect! This type of profiles and academic itineraries, which are unconventional, are characteristic of the STS.

These systems, these Science & Technology Studies, were also crucial in establishing the RRI (Responsible Research and Innovation) programs on a European scale that have marked scientific policy in the Union for many years. To build innovation in responsible technology (or more socially robust), spaces are needed, many more than those that exist now, that allow learning processes between these very diverse areas.

What impact would you like STS-CAT to have on Catalan society? How do you imagine it could contribute to making Catalonia a benchmark for analysis in science and technology?

First of all, we want to create a space for ourselves within the context of Catalan academia. And this will not be easy at all, because in Spain the university organization has a hyper-bureaucratic character, which does not favor interdisciplinary approaches. But we also want to actively intervene in the debates on science and technology, and contribute to broadening its focus and questioning, if necessary, its assumptions.

On the other hand, Catalonia is already a national benchmark in the field of STS – ours is the first association to be created and some colleagues from other parts of the peninsula have shown great interest and have given their support. But on an international scale we still have a lot to do, because many researchers are leaving, and because we have been lagging behind at an institutional level for a long time.