How the Learner Can Become the Master: Using Science Fiction as a Tool in Assessing the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of New and Emerging Science and Technology

For the last two hundred years, Frankenstein has been wreaking havoc on science policy. The story is so embedded in our Western psyche that the prefix ‘Franken-‘ remains an integral part of modern language as a reference to areas of technological innovation that we feel have gone too far. Since Frankenstein, there has been a long synergistic history of science fiction and scientific and technological advancements, for better or for worse: arguably the many iterations of Star Trek have had an outsized influence on engineers over the past decades, and some have suggested that the Jurassic Park films have inhibited some aspects of paleontology. Given this inter-relationship between technology and science fiction, we argue that there is pedagogical value in including science fiction within the science curricula, specifically in the analysis of the ethical, legal, and social implications of new and emerging technologies. Consider, for example, GATTACA, a mainstay of bioethics curricula as a tool to teach about the ELSI aspects of genetic engineering. Further, science fiction often presents near-future technologies and societies that can be employed as teaching tools when assessing the societal concerns associated with new scientific advancements.

The goal of this research topic is to collect essays that discuss the role of science fiction in film, television, books, or otherwise in the analysis of the ethical, social, and legal implications of technological developments. This special research topic will also collect essays relating to the prescient value of science fiction in identifying and/or influencing new trends in science and technology.

This research topic aims to be broad in its scope, looking for new research, editorials, reviews, and methodology papers that all look broadly to

• focus on a particular film—employ it to describe the ethical, legal, and/or social concerns associated with that technology
• discuss issues relating to the use of science fiction in the teaching of science, such as genomics
• discuss how science fiction can and perhaps has been used in the area of science policy
• provide direction as to how science fiction can be created to promote the ethical, social and legal use of science and technology
• discuss how science fiction can and has been employed for science communication and many other issues at the intersection of science fiction and the ethical, legal, and social implications of science and technology.