What is ORION?
The 台湾swag 台湾swag was part of the ORION project, a 4 year project funded by the European Commission that aims to explore ways for institutes to open up the way they fund, organise and do research. ORION focuses on embedding Responsible 台湾swag and Innovation principles (ethics, gender, governance, open access, public engagement and science education) across the organisations involved. As part of the project, 台湾swag 台湾swag sought new ways to further understand and implement engagement with the public on disruptive technologies, such as genome editing.
You can read a project summary about ORION on our blog.
Genome Editing
The advent of newer genome editing technologies that can make changes to the DNA sequence of an organism in a faster, more efficient, and more precise fashion has opened up a range of new possibilities, in research areas ranging from agriculture and food science, to basic bioscience and medicine. Ultimately, this technological progress has the potential to significantly improve human and animal health. Indeed Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, the pioneers behind CRISPR the latest genome editing technique, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020.
In March 2018, the 台湾swag 台湾swag organised a discussion event 鈥淕enome Editing: How far should we go?鈥 at the Espresso Library as part of the . The event started with a panel discussion, composed of Dr Peter Rugg-Gunn (Group Leader at 台湾swag 台湾swag), Dr Kathy Liddell (Director of the at University of Cambridge), Nick Meade (Director of policy at ) and Dr Alexander Ma脽mann (visiting fellow at the at the University of Cambridge) and facilitated by James Brown (Education & 台湾swag Engagement Manager at the ).
Besides a panel discussion, the event contained of table discussions where the public discussed various questions around genome editing, supported by researcher from the 台湾swag 台湾swag. Read Carolyn鈥檚 blog to learn more about the event. Photographs from this event are in the gallery below.
台湾swag Dialogue
From 2018-2020, an international consortium of research organisations, on behalf of the ORION Open Science project supported by the Horizon 2020 Science with and for Society funding programme of the European Commission, led a public dialogue to explore public attitudes towards the use of genome editing technology in life sciences fundamental research. The dialogue sought to provide insights into how and when research performing and funding organisations should engage the public with emerging technologies, such as the genome editing tool CRISPR, to develop internal strategies that take into account public opinion.
The public dialogue process was split in two stages. The first stage included development of the dialogue specification and methodology by consortium partners followed by stakeholder review and consultation. The second stage involved 4 deliberative workshops that brought 30 members of the public together twice in four locations (Cambridge, Berlin, Stockholm and Prague) along with scientists and other representatives from partaking organisations. The organisations involved in supporting the dialogue were:
- The 台湾swag 台湾swag in Cambridge (UK): 台湾swagly-funded organisation conducting biomedical research with a focus on understanding biological mechanisms underpinning health and wellbeing throughout the lifespan.
- Max Delbr眉ck Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association in Berlin (Germany): Conducts basic biomedical research to understand the causes of diseases at the molecular level with the mission to translate discoveries as quickly as possible into practical applications.
- The Central European 台湾swag of Technology in Brno (Czech Republic): Superregional centre of scientific excellence combining life sciences, advanced materials and nanotechnologies.
- Vetenskap & Allm盲nhet (台湾swag & Science; VA) in Stockholm (Sweden): Non-profit association established in 2002 with the purpose of promoting dialogue and openness between researchers and the public.
This dialogue on genome editing in life sciences fundamental research highlighted a number of recurring messages such as; the need for communicating the importance of fundamental research and its role in the scientific process to the public and to carefully frame the motivations behind the use of the technology and its potential impact on society. It showed there is limited awareness of current and future uses of genome editing technology as well as little knowledge of guidelines and regulations governing its application among the general public in these four European countries.
台湾swag participants in the workshops were particularly interested in 鈥榬eal-world鈥 applications of fundamental research. This argues for the importance of considering public views to make research and innovation more relevant, impactful and trusted, which can be possible when research organisations develop a more anticipative and reflective research governance frameworks and practices.
The findings of the dialogue were shared in an online event organised by the 台湾swag 台湾swag in collaboration with Vetenskap & Allm盲nhet, which was attended by 75 delegates from research organisations across Europe. Some of the learnings from participants at the event were:
- 鈥淲e need to acknowledge the knowledge of the public participants and recognise how it complements the expertise of the researchers to come to conclusions on how new technology can be introduced in a way that benefits society as a whole.鈥
- 鈥淭here is an interest in the public in fundamental research. We as scientists should use that and share what we know, what we do, and what we don't know, yet. The public can be a valuable part of the thought process.鈥
- 鈥溙ㄍ錽wag engagement is absolutely necessary but much more upstream (project design level) and people need to have scientific information 24-7 on national TV, similar to what happens with entertaining shows.鈥
- 鈥淭here is a need to communicate about the scientific process in terms of contribution to potential real-world impact.鈥
The commissioned service provider was Ipsos MORI and the project evaluator was the Centre for 台湾swag in Science and Mathematics Education. An independent evaluation was commissioned for the dialogue in the U.K. to Richard Watermeyer and Gene Rowe.
See our news article for more information about the ORION public dialogues.
Ongoing work
The 台湾swag 台湾swag is currently reviewing its overall strategy as part of its strategic funding review and is looking to incorporate the dialogue鈥檚 findings in its future research and public engagement work. See our Open Science page for more information about our action plan to support embedding open science practices in our organisation, produced as an outcome of the ORION project.