Ethics, public education at SfN

NEW ORLEANS—At the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience from November 8 to 12, more than 28,000 registrants viewed more than 15,000 presentations on everything from ion channel physiology and neural stem cells to circadian rhythms and human cognition and behavior. But also on the agenda were discussions of burgeoning policy concerns in neuroscience.Donald Kennedy, editor in chief of Science, told an audience on Monday (November 10) that the explosion in imaging technologies was raising important ethical issues. Because people equate their brains and consciousnesses with the essence of their humanity, the study of everything from “predictive moral choice profile” to a “capacity for certain intentions” may be better left opaque.Because it's not known how such information might one day be used, Kennedy said, the issues in neuroethics boil down to a threat on privacy: there may be “things we'd rather others not know about us,” and therefore perhaps “knowledge that we should do without,” he said at a lecture sponsored by the Dana Foundation. “I don't want my insurance company to know my genome, but as for my brainome, I don't want anybody to know it for any purpose whatsoever. It is way too close to who I am.”Huda Akil, outgoing president of the society, agreed. Functional magnetic resonance imaging's (fMRI's) “potential to give us imprints of how somebody thinks is probably the most direct danger that we face,” she told The Scientist. “This line between when you stop helping someone and when you put people at risk for a very personal kind of invasion of privacy is really very thin, and we should be mindful of it.” Akil did not believe it was time to develop legal restrictions for the use of fMRI, but said she hoped that “discussions like this will stimulate [debate] so that we as a community will self-regulate in a thoughtful way, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”At the “Animals in Research” panel on Sunday (November 9), Judy Cameron, Steven Lisberger, and UK Medical Research Council Chief Executive Colin Blakemore—three researchers extensively targeted by animal rights organizations such as In Defense of Animals and the Animal Liberation Front—said that scientists could avoid attacks from such activists with proactive community outreach, including regular presentations in schools and to the media, to make clear the value of their research and the necessity of using animals, they said. Lisberger also called for a public relations campaign comparable to that of animal rights groups and involving an investment of “a large amount of money, intellect, and public relations professionals.”While the panel advocated the need for transparency in scientific research, a satellite symposium on Monday (November 10) addressed some of the barriers to bringing understanding of science to people outside of the research community. One such barrier was researchers themselves. “We need to get to the point where scientists understand the relevance of educating the public about their work, but we haven't gotten there yet,” meeting coorganizer Shadi Farhangrazi, director of the National Center for Study of Orphan Diseases, told The Scientist.Speakers from the research community, industry, the academic press, and the media debated who should shoulder the responsibility for conveying meaningful scientific information to the public and through what medium it should be conveyed. Nature Neuroscience Executive Editor Charles Jennings cited a recent study showing that 25% of findings reported at an academic conference that made headline news were never later published in peer-reviewed journals. “There is simply no correlation in the media between what's relevant and what's covered,” he said.But Joe Palca, senior science correspondent for National Public Radio, said the media may be the wrong venue for educating the public, on even the most basic scientific concepts. “I think we can become a part of the education process, but the real way you learn stuff is you grapple with it in an educational context,” he said. “We talk about educating the public, but what we really mean is informing the public.”There was a serious need, speakers agreed, to identify sources with scientific authority and credibility, but without conflicting interests such as economic incentives, to act as spokespeople for research. “When scientific experts do not do the educating, there is a vacuum,” said Esther Sternberg, a neuroimmunologist at the National Institutes of Mental Health. “People want the information, and they will get it from uninformed sources,” she said, creating “misinformation, potentially myth, fear, and harm to public health.”

Ethics, public education at SfN

Donald Kennedy worries about privacy in lecture at annual Society for Neuroscience meeting

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of