Synthetic Society/Community Organization and Culture

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Meta-level questions to be addressed

  1. Is thinking about community organization and culture a waste of time?
  2. Do we actually need to write down standards of practice or can they just exist as community norms?
  3. What would a code of conduct for synthetic biologists look like?
  4. What standards of practice, if any, are needed beyond that of existing disciplines?
  5. Can this small group of people speak for the community or have their ideas accepted by the community? What about people outside the mainstream synthetic biology research community?
  6. If we do want to implement a community code of conduct, how should it be done?

Upcoming tasks

  1. research relevant examples from other disciplines and post summaries on the wiki
  2. brainstorm names of outside people we want to bring in to voice opinions
    1. Here's the emeritus professor in STS I mentioned at the last meeting: Charles Wiener If you think his input would be helpful, I'll contact him. Sophia

Relevant examples from other disciplines

Professional engineering societies

  • Exams
  • Whose held liable if a bridge breaks?
  • there are a number of professional societies in the "bioengineering" space. it would be good to (i) list these and (ii) understand what their missions are. Endy 21:37, 11 January 2006 (EST)

Assigned to: Austin

Asilomar

  • How did the BSL system arise from Asilomar?

Assigned to: Sri

NIH regulations and recommendations

  • Ethics training for those on an NIH training grant
  • Recommendation to publish in open-access journals

Assigned to: Sri

Montsanto

  • What kinds of regulations does Montsanto have to adhere to in order to grow its crops?
    • FDA?
    • EPA?

Assigned to: Sophia

Institutional review boards

  • Institution-level committees that review sensitive research projects (for example, those having to do with human subjects).

Assigned to: Larry

International bodies

  • United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

UNESCO has five functions including as a standards setter and mechanism for collecting and distributing information in certain fields. And it does some work in science policy. As expected, a lot of effort is focused either on environmental issues or on building infrastructure for science in developing countries. They do seems to have a very large and diverse set of initiatives.

  • Do journals have any prescribed standards?

Assigned to: Reshma

Medicine

There appears to actually be a lot of dispute over the Hippocratic oath and exactly what it should contain. And there are different versions so not all doctors necessarily adhere to the same oath. Interestingly, the modern version linked here contains the phrase "I must not play god." It also includes a section on calling in outside help when it may aid a patient's recovery.

  • Medical licensing

Assigned to: Reshma

Programming

  • There is no open source community slashdot post article
  • No known standards of practice beyond ad hoc peer review
  • Software code is awful so this might not be the model we want to follow?

Actions that could be coordinated on a community-wide basis

  • prescribe a code of conduct
  • develop eduational materials
  • organize conferences
  • promote a motto for the community (i.e. "Don't be evil")
  • publish journals
  • develop and establish standards
  • implement safety regulations for synthetic systems and organisms
  • give awards of excellence

Methods to coordinate community-wide action

  • iGEM serves to help form a cohesive community since it brings people together on an annual basis
  • Synthetic Biology conference
  • Drew as a Stallman-like figure who prescribes a philosophy for the field that others buy into
  • found a new organization to better represent the entire community
    • how does it gain widespread acceptable and legitimacy?
    • who would do the work of starting it?
  • use existing institutions to give legitimacy to our proposed initiatives
    • government at the local, state or federal level
    • universities
    • National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering, National Research Council
    • NIH principles and guidelines
    • The BioBricks Foundation
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