Overview
This year, as part of our silver medal criteria, we decided to implement the STIR protocol into our project, which helped us to have a better understanding of how our work is going to affect several socio-political scenarios, and how these realms have affected our project.
In order to better implement the Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR) protocol [1], we contacted the STIR associate in the UK, Dr Paul Everest, in order to have a better overview of the processes that characterise the protocol. Even though we had previously read and examined the videos and reports that describe the protocol, we thought it would be valuable to have a human approach with someone who was directly involved in the implementation of STIR. Dr Everest accepted to speak to us and explained the typical features that distinguish the STIR protocol.
Dr Everest explained that STIR is entirely based on the idea of a collaboration between social and natural science. In order to achieve this, a joint effort was needed from both the social and the natural world, which could be created with the use of targeted questions that identified connections between the scientific project and how it could have had an impact on the rest of the world.
What was most interesting about the conversation with Dr Everest is that we realised that we were, almost unknowingly, already implementing the STIR protocol. Clearly the conversation with Dr Everest helped us refine the implementation and ask more structured questions, however we have been trying to create a bond between social and natural world since the very beginning of our project. Our team included members from a social science background as well as natural scientists, and this diversity has helped us to create a multi-dimensional approach that has benefitted the purpose of the project.
In order to implement the STIR protocol in its full potential, we have also reviewed previous implementations of the protocol from previous iGEM teams and noticed how its implementations was mainly tied to the creation of the project idea. Teams in the past have engaged in the approach proposed by the protocol and used it to come up with an idea that complied with the STIR structure and was well-thought in terms of social aspects of the project. However, once a project idea was conceived, several teams have abandoned the STIR protocol structured approach to focus on a closer analysis of the socio-ethical aspects of the project.
This, also according to Dr Everest, might cause the STIR protocol to lose its focus, since it is specifically characterised by a defined structure that should ideally be followed at every stage of the process. For this reason, not only did we implement the STIR protocol when choosing our project idea; but we also continued to adopt the same approach throughout the entire duration of the project.
We believe that the protocol, alongside other social analyses and reflections throughout our project, have helped us to achieve a project that has taken into full consideration several social, political, and economic aspects that will have an impact on our work, and also changed the way our project was conceived since its very inception. We considered the three main variables of the STIR protocol for both creating a project idea, but more importantly, for developing it.
The variables we considered for integration were
- Learning and exploring societal dimensions of laboratory technical work
- Capacity to anticipate societal dimensions
- Bringing in alternative perspectives such as social and public values; ethical concerns; and stakeholder considerations.
For additional information on how we have implemented each of the mentioned variables please have a look at our gold medal criteria for human practices.
References
- ↑ Arizona State University. (2016). Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR). Available: https://cns.asu.edu/research/stir. Last accessed 19th Aug 2017
