Building Societal Considerations into the Heart of Basic Research

Within the next few months, Professor Dame Carol Robinson’s protein biochemistry laboratory is going to welcome an honorary member of sorts. He’ll be attending group meetings across a range of labs at the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery at the University of Oxford. He’ll ask lab members about their individual projects. He’ll make presentations of his own. He’ll chat with graduate students and postdocs at the bench to get up to speed. He’ll take many, many notes. And in time, he might even pop out for a meal—and more stimulating discussions—with the teams after hours.

But the new arrival, Mackenzie Graham, is not a biochemist or a scientist. He holds a Ph.D. in moral philosophy and is a senior research fellow at Oxford’s home for multidisciplinary bioethics research, the Ethox Centre.

Graham is embedding himself into Kavli Oxford to help them proactively consider the downstream ethical dimensions of their work. Concurrently, he will work to uncover and address potential ethical considerations born from the institute’s curiosity-driven research. It’s a testing ground — the vision is a hub where research groups across the Kavli Institute can ponder societal implications of research, a setup that can serve as a model for other institutions. This work is supported by a new grant from The Kavli Foundation.

Robinson directs the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery. A major inspiration for this project is her lab’s experiences with research involving human brain tissue donated for research from the families of people who died by suicide.

“We needed advice when presenting our findings and when engaging with patients with lived experience,” Robinson says. “There was also a further angle we hadn’t considered sufficiently, which was the preparation of the students themselves to work in this area. Having an embedded ethicist will really help us shape some of these considerations and help us be better prepared for future discussions.”

Scientists are experts in the complexities of their fields, whether neurochemistry or next-generation biomaterials. But they tend to be outside of their comfort zone discussing how their science could interface with society, or fielding citizens’ concerns—justified or not—about the nature of their science, Graham says. He and Robinson share a goal of empowering scientists to contribute to discussions about the ethical considerations of their work, rather than delegating that responsibility to social scientists and community leaders. “What was unique about The Kavli Foundation’s funding call is that it comes from this place of recognition that the contribution to ethics that scientists can make hasn't really been recognized. And it's about scientists and ethicists working together to understand these kinds of problems in a more sophisticated way,” Graham says.

To be full partners in conversations about downstream considerations, however, scientists must allow themselves the vulnerability to voice their own excitement and their own worry about different facets of their work. That’s not something that can be accomplished by tacking a consultation with an ethicist onto a grant once the potential applications of basic research start to become evident, Graham says. “That level of trust isn’t going to emerge from a couple of one-off visits.”

Hence the idea for Graham to embed himself in the science from the start. He won’t be working solo. He’ll collaborate with a physical scientist research assistant who is yet to be chosen. This scientist will have a deep interest in ethics and will be a bridge between Graham and the institute’s bench researchers. They will ensure that any talks or skill-building sessions Graham provides align with the researchers’ needs.

That bridge will be crucial for busy researchers who might be concerned that conversations about where their science might meet society will be an administrative burden, or that it will delay the laboratory work that they must do to advance in their careers. Graham’s approach is designed to be steered by researchers’ own interests. And he emphasizes that even though he’s a philosopher, he’s not the arbiter of right and wrong. He sees himself as a guide who can teach scientists to think systematically about societal implications and varying perspectives. “I don’t know any better about the right thing to do than anybody else,” he says.

When he isn’t forging new relationships in the labs, Graham will work to surface potential societal considerations about work from the institute that aren’t yet known. He’ll collaborate with Désirée Tennant, who led this application and whose job as Organizational Development Lead at the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery includes fostering a collaborative culture. Initially, the focus will be on research that looks at brain tissue from deceased people to interrogate what is happening at a cellular level, which could provide insight into depression and bipolar disorder. Graham will start by analyzing literature from science and philosophy. Then, to learn about public views, Graham will host brain donors’ families, patient community members, and members of broader society in what’s called a deliberative forum. This workshop format guides attendees to share their views, and to ponder the myriad contributing factors that shape those views. Kavli Institute researchers will provide scientific and technical expertise leading up to the forum, participate, and listen and learn from these dialogues. The takeaways from this case study will be published in peer-reviewed journals and in blog posts and shared with institute scientists.

“If it works there, hopefully it'll work more broadly,” Graham says. Future threads of ethics work might encompass other research topics at the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, such as discovery science underpinning issues like infectious disease or cancer.

“We are excited to support the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery at Oxford University to do this work,” says Brooke Smith, The Kavli Foundation’s Director of Science and Society. “The Kavli Institute at Oxford is world-leading in science, pushing frontiers at the intersection of physical and cellular science. Their leadership to embed experts to consider ethical and societal implications of work, throughout the research cycle, is also groundbreaking. It is very rare but exceptional, to embed ethicists focused on exploring the societal implications of research, as opposed to research ethics and regulatory compliance.”

For his part, Graham says he’s excited to build trust with the institute’s researchers so that they’re collaborating to make science richer, rather than working in parallel. He still maintains professional ties and co-publishes with a different group of scientists that first consulted with him a decade ago. “It takes a long time to build up these sorts of relationships. But once you have them, yeah, it’s great.”