Sheila Jasanoff believes it is time for Harvard Kennedy School’s to take a leading role in a world where accelerating scientific discovery often seems to be leaving ethics and public values behind.
Part of her vision is what she calls an “observatory” that would monitor and anticipate major advances in bioscience and other emerging technologies. Its purpose would be to start discussions about ethical issues and social implications before those advances start having effects—both anticipated and not—on society.
“The question on so many people’s minds is whether science and technology are operating for public wellbeing,” says Jasanoff, the Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. “It’s a democracy question—about who gets to choose and judge the evolution of technological possibilities.”
Two recent developments may indicate that Jasanoff’s moment has arrived. The first, and most welcome, was that the Social Science Research Council awarded her the for her work building STS into an important field of study over more than three decades. Past winners included a who’s who in the social sciences, including Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, Thomas W. Lamont University Professor.
“It’s a huge surprise, and obviously a great honor,” says Jasanoff, who accepted the award on November 30 in New York. Teresa Caldeira, the Hirschman Prize Committee chair, wrote that Jasanoff “combines research with a commitment to change the world and to innovative theory-making based on illustrations provided by observation and carefully researched empirical studies.”
But another, less welcome, surprise came in the form of an alarming announcement out of the International Human Genome Editing Summit in Hong Kong, where Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced that he and his research team had used gene-editing technology to produce a set of human girl twins who were resistant to HIV. Widespread condemnation followed that announcement, including an written by Jasanoff with Arizona State University Associate Professor Ben Hurlbut and University of Wisconsin-Madison Assistant Professor Krishanu Saha.
“It was a highly irresponsible step—an unnecessary and