Controversias

What is controversy?

Although the term often carries the sense of a lively polemic, it is employed here in the more restrained sense of a "debate surrounding a technique or scientific fact thathas not yet been determined". An example would be GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) and the correlating issues around hybrid foods, though many other debates exist outside the mainstream. Thecourse's primary goal is to confront you with forms of knowledge that are still unstable, around which there exists no clear guide. Therefore our research will focus on situations where the social,political, and moral uncertainties are rendered more complex, rather than less, by scientific knowledge or established techniques.
Why focus on controversies rather than established scientific facts?Scientific and technical knowledge is always presented in its final form, without ever offering insight into how its certitude has been achieved; yet those intermediate stages, corresponding to the actualresearch process, best highlight the connections between scientific work and other types of activities). In this course, we will unseat your certainties as much as possible, by confronting youdirectly with a situation of conflict, created partly by research and partly by the social and political circumstances surrounding that research. This type of double uncertainty corresponds more and more tothe actual situation in which you will work as professionals. General competence will always be needed, but more and more the capacity to analyze highly controversial situations for which there is noprevious modeling, is required (technology risks, scientific uncertainties, a multiplicity of possible scenarios, and conflicts of moral value).
Why this course?

The fundamental skill required oftechnologists, scientists, and researchers is no longer to choose the most appropriate or optimized technical solution, but rather to assist employers and other stakeholders in identifying all...