Ethics on the Laboratory Floor

People nowadays live in a human-made environment, or technotope. Their lives are entangled with technology. Because technology not only brings gifts but also costs and hazards, it is important to reflect on what good technology is and, indeed, whether a technology contributes to a good life.

The ethicists and social scientists united in this volume contribute to a novel approach to ethics and technology that initiates or enhances timely ethical reflection with scientists and engineers. Ethical reflection during research and development can help to anticipate how it can change human (social) like, and evaluate those changes. Ethics on the Laboratory Floor contributes to research decisions, for example with regard to what research goals to pursue, what research lines to prioritise, or how best to design user tests. By joining these deliberations Ethics on the Laboratory Floor helps to realise the best technological alternatives.

Simone van der Burg is Senior Researcher and theme leader ethics at IQ healthcare. Her current projects focus on the enhancement of ethical reflection among scientists and medical professionals about the technologies that they develop/use, in order to realize a more responsible innovation. She published in international and Dutch journals and books.
 
Tsjalling Swierstra is Professor of Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He published extensively on the mutual shaping of technology and morality, public controversies on emerging technologies, and engineering ethics. He chairs the Centre for Ethics and Politics of Emerging Technologies.

Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction; Enhancing Ethical Reflection in the Laboratory: How Soft Impacts Require Tough Thinking; Simone Van Der Burg and Tsjalling Swierstra
1. Which Focus for an Ethics in Nanotechnology Laboratories?; Bernadette Bensaude Vincent
2. Responsible Research and Development: Roles of Ethicists on the Lab Floor; Armin Grunwald
3. The Multiple Practices of Doing 'Ethics in the Lab' - A Mid-Level Perspective; Marianne Boenink
4. Technology Design as Experimental Ethics; Peter-Paul Verbeek
5. Co-Shaping the Life Story of a Technology; From Technological Ancestry to Visions of the Future; Simone Van Der Burg
6. Ethics on the Basis of Technological Choices; Xavier Guchet
7. Environmental Ethics in an Ecotoxicology Laboratory; Fern Wickson
8. The Promises of Emerging Diagnostics: From Scientists' Visions to the Lab Bench and Back; Federica Lucivero
9. Dramatic Rehearsal on the Societal Embedding of the Lithium Chip; Lotte Krabbenborg
10. Pervasive Normativity and Emerging Technologies; Arie Rip
11. Underdetermination and Overconfidence – Constructivism, Design Thinking, and the Ethics Politics of Research; Alfred Nordmann
Index