Developing a Social Responsibility Toolkit for Scientists Working on Cleanup Sites

University Of Texas Medical Branch At Galveston, Galveston TX

Investigators

Abstract

Environmental cleanups occur after contamination and possible human exposure related to radioactive materials, oil spills, military munitions, lead, asbestos, and hazardous industrial spills or toxic solid waste. Leveraging the interdisciplinary scientific expertise and knowledge of communities and nonprofit organizations can significantly improve cleanup planning, procedures, and outcomes. This project aims to design, test, and refine a toolkit that will help researchers incorporate social values and responsibilities into their work at cleanup sites, and translate their research into transparent, relevant, useful, and beneficial outcomes. This process will entail developing scientific responsibilities in line with social values. Along with ensuring economic wellbeing, these values can include reducing disparities, harmful environmental impacts, and long term risks for future generations. The toolkit developed in this study will be implemented in different cleanup sites after the study, with the aim of improving transparency about social values. Being transparent about the responsibilities of researchers facilitates the alignment of research with stakeholder social values and results in better development of research products. Participant recruitment for this study will focus on individuals impacted by cleanup sites and processes. The project team aims to incorporate the perceptions, ideals, and values of the participants in the development and evaluation of the toolkit. The goals of this project are to (1) describe the social values that influence research at three cleanup sites, (2) identify how stakeholders at these cleanup sites perceive the ethical integration of social values and epistemic values in research studies, and (3) develop a toolkit to promote responsibility in translational research conducted at cleanup sites that can be used and further developed in the future. Methods will include ethnographic participant-observation fieldwork, qualitative interviews, and focus groups with stakeholders at environmental cleanup sites. The project team will also gather key policy and programmatic documents related to cleanup activities at the sites and the history of the communities where cleanups are occurring. This project is jointly funded through the ER2 program by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences and the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.