ROE & CRISPR

"... found it by accident..."

"... discovery by accident..."

"... discovered by accident..."

"... accidental discovery..."

"... a eureka moment..."

These phrases were all either in headlines or in body paragraphs of articles from Business Insider, BiotechIn, The New Yorker, the Genetic Literacy Project, and the New York Times in reference to a new genetic engineering technology called CRISPR. It's a much easier and more precise way to alter genetic sequences in pretty much any organism using specific molecules (termed "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats") found in commonly occurring microbes.

So how did it get discovered?

Well, it seems that media sources and even Jennifer Doudna, one of the inventors, make it seem as though it just sort of... Happened. Doudna and co-inventor Emmanuelle Charpentier (not that this is relevant right now, but they're both women!) were doing research together on what were essentially the immune systems of microbial DNA. After a while, they serendipitously discovered CRISPR,  lauded as biotech's "most promising breakthrough." Fast forward a few months, and hooray! They've each won a $3 million Breakthrough Prize, and are rumored to win a Nobel prize. There are countless articles about the technology itself--warning of its ethical implications on human genetic alteration (i.e. "designer babies"), celebrating its revolutionary abilities, etc.--but almost every article that mentions its actual discovery refers to it as unintentional in some way.

While on face, this use of the word "accidental" seems like rhetoric of self-effacement (where the scientist's efforts are not acknowledged as important to the discovery), media coverage of CRISPR's discovery both praises the simplicity with which it was discovered as well as the presence and significance of the scientists (especially Doudna). All of the aforementioned articles (except for the one from the NY Times) spend several paragraphs talking about Doudna and Charpentier (or sometimes just Doudna) before even mentioning CRISPR. Doudna was very clearly associated with the invention of CRISPR, and was even asked to give a TED Talk in London. The NY Times compared her discovery of CRISPR as analogous to Watson and Crick's discovery of the double helix structure of DNA (even though it was actually discovered by a woman named Rosalind Franklin, but I won't get into that...).

Two of the three components that make rhetoric of effortlessness effective can be seen here. First, the technology was discovered very naturally, therefore making it seem more credible as a "naturally-occurring truth." Doudna and Charpentier weren't putting building blocks together to make a genetic modifier; they were basically just trying to figure out how bacteria fight the flu. CRISPR is merely an already-occurring biological process applied to non-bacterial organisms. It's less of an invention and more of a nifty application, like aloe vera sap used for sunburns. Like other "natural" truths, it was more "unveiled" than it was "constructed." While machinery exists to actually use CRISPR technology (fingers have been found to be inadequate instruments for splicing RNA), CRISPR itself is a naturally occurring molecule. Second, the discovery of CRISPR seems even more effortless (and credible) because there were no problems when discovering it. How could there be, when it's a completely natural phenomenon that occurs in bacteria, like digestion or replication? Because its discovery and subsequent tests seemingly did not involve any errors or uncertainty, CRISPR was more credible as a new technology.

The reason I'm not really talking about the third reason, where the scientists are seen as more credible for having expended such little effort, is because it's hard to gauge how people view Doudna and Charpentier. I couldn't find any articles that were about their credibility as scientists. Articles that mention them mostly state facts: direct quotes from interviews, educational history, the discovery of CRISPR. However, I'm sure that the impact CRISPR has had/continues to have in the bio-technical sphere (see what I did there) will make both inventors extremely credible names in future research.

The discovery of CRISPR, overall, has been overwhelmingly represented as a coincidental finding by Doudna and Charpentier. It required seemingly very little effort, occurred completely naturally, and apparently had no obstacles keeping Doudna and Charpentier from developing its potential. In the next post, I'm going to talk about how the increased credibility of scientific discoveries/scientists as well as the increased trust in science leads to relatively extreme tech optimism.

References (listed by order of reference; some are referenced more than once)

Loria, Kevin. "The Researchers behind 'the Biggest Biotech Discovery of the Century' Found It by Accident." Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 07 July 2015. Web. <http://www.businessinsider.com/the-people-who-discovered-the-most-powerful-genetic-engineering-tool-we-know-found-it-by-accident-2015-6?r=UK&IR=T>.

Sushmitha. "CRISPR-Breakthrough Discovery by Accident." Biotechinasia. Biotech Media Pte. Ltd., 23 July 2015. Web. <https://biotechin.asia/2015/07/23/crispr-breakthrough-discovery-by-accident/>.

Specter, Michael. "The Gene Hackers." The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 08 Nov. 2015. Web. <http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-gene-hackers>. 

Palca, Joe. "How Accidental Discovery Led to Gene Editing Breakthrough–and Maybe to Nobel Prize." Genetic Literacy Project. Genetic Literacy Project, 14 Oct. 2014. Web. <https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/10/14/how-accidental-discovery-led-to-gene-editing-breakthrough-and-maybe-to-nobel-prize/>.

Pollack, Andrew. "Jennifer Doudna, a Pioneer Who Helped Simplify Genome Editing." The New York Times. The New York Times, 11 May 2015. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/science/jennifer-doudna-crispr-cas9-genetic-engineering.html>.

Johnson, Carolyn Y. "Control of CRISPR, Biotech’s Most Promising Breakthrough, Is in Dispute." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 13 Jan. 2016. Web. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/control-of-crispr-biotechs-most-promising-breakthrough-is-up-for-grabs/>.

"How CRISPR Lets Us Edit Our DNA." Online video clip. TED. TED, Sep. 2015. Web.

Rhetoric of Effortlessness

When I say "rhetoric of effortlessness," what do you think of? Do you think of rhetoric that "consists in conveying the impression that, whereas a particular investigator was responsible for a finding, establishing that finding cost that investigator little mental, physical or social effort" (McAllister 148)? Because if you do, then you are absolutely correct! Rhetoric of effortlessness, developed by James McAllister, is pretty self-explanatory. It's rhetoric that makes scientific discoveries seem as though they were made, well, without effort. It's related to, but different from, two other rhetorical concepts, which McAllister calls rhetoric of effort and rhetoric of self-effacemnent. I'm not talking about either of those things in the next post, so I won't go into the nitty gritty details. All you need to know is that rhetoric of effort makes it seem like the scientist poured their heart and soul into a finding, whereas rhetoric of self-effacement is almost the complete opposite; it implies that the scientist put in no effort, and that they basically just happened to be in the right place at the right time when the discovery decided to make itself known to the world.

Rhetoric of effortlessness, then, differs in the regard that it portrays effort as still being required to discover something, and the scientist is as still the one who discovered it, but the amount of effort required is very clearly minimal.

Rhetoric of effortlessness that is successfully executed (i.e. rhetoric that the audience believes) results in the discovery having more credibility as "objective" and "true," the scientist having a better reputation for being skilled enough to come upon the discovery without overexerting her/himself, and science in general being seen in a more positive light as a result of the first two.

According to McAllister, these effects occur for three main reasons.

The first reason depends on the assumption that "truths are natural and discovered, whereas departures from the truth are artificial and constructed" (148). If that is the case, truths are perceived to be easy to discover, because "[additional] effort would raise suspicions that one had constructed a falsehood instead" (148). For instance, it wasn't hard to discover that a particular plant was poisonous if ingested; it really only took one sucker to die from eating a berry for the whole village to be like, "Okay, not that one." These kinds of truths were learned through common sense and/or observation. However, more "artificial" truths are met with more resistance because they are less obvious and often involve technical aspects that the average person doesn't necessarily understand. (I still only sort of know how gene splicing works, and I've taken two classes that were specifically about genetics.) This way of thinking is similar to a "resistance to the artificial" that people feel towards inventions such as GMOs or artificial intelligence when evaluating risk (Kolodziejski). Ease, and the implied "naturalness" that presupposes it, makes discoveries more credible as "natural truths."

In a similar vein, the second reason assumes that effortless discoveries are the natural direction of progression when researching that thing. If something is effortless, people assume that there were likely no unexpected obstacles, complicated problems, or alternatives that would require additional effort to untangle and solve. Those additional factors lead to more chances for error and uncertainty, and since the average person can't possibly know whether or not a study accounted for every single error or potential for uncertainty, the potential of existing errors/uncertainties makes the discovery less credible. Therefore, if a scientist expends little or no effort, the finding is more credible.

The last reason builds off of the second one to give credibility to the scientist: if a researcher was able to discover something in such a fashion that requires very little effort, then they must be incredibly talented and intelligent. And because they chose a direction of research that didn't involve many extraneous problems, and therefore produced something with (presumably) very few errors. These assumptions make the scientist (as opposed to his/her discovery) seem more trustworthy.

References (listed by order of reference)

McAllister, James W. "Rhetoric Of Effortlessness In Science." Perspectives On Science 24.2 (2016): 145-166. Academic Search Premier. Web.

Kolodziejski, Lauren A. "ROSTM & Risk Communication." California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Building 186-C201, San Luis Obipso, CA. 25 Apr. 2016. Lecture.

Tech Optimism & Tech Pessimism

What are tech optimism and tech pessimism? Well, to be honest, they're pretty much exactly what they sound like. They're based in perceptions of risk, according to Hoschschild, Crabill, and Sen, and they're caused by people without much technical knowledge obtaining most of their information about technology from secondary sources, such as media--and we all know how spot-on accurate media can be. Hjorliefsson, quoted by Hochschild et al., defines tech optimism as the "'underestimation and neglect of uncertainty' in favor of 'widely shared speculative promise,'" (2) and tech pessimism as "the overestimation of threat and harmful impact and insufficient attention to benefits or to people’s ability to respond appropriately to risk" (3).

According to Hochschild et al.'s research, a lot of studies have been done to find out what influences tech optimism and pessimism, and the only real consensus seems to be that it has a lot to do with an individual's sociocultural context, as well as individual preference. When it comes to excessive tech optimism or tech pessimism, however, Hochschild et al. have found that "roughly the same variables appear to generate excessive optimism as excessive pessimism" (4). This is interesting to note, because it seems to imply that a leaning towards tech optimism or tech pessimism depends most heavily on the individual's predisposition for one or the other based on what they have been exposed to. 

It kind of reminds me of the whole "horseshoe theory," which is a political science theory that basically says that people that are far right and far left may behave very similarly, even though they differ completely in their core ideologies. It's the idea behind arguments that Bernie Sanders' supporters and Donald Trump's supporters are actually very similar, but just have different sociocultural contexts and ideologies (the most fervent supporters of both tend to be young, middle-class white men; very passionate; etc.). It would appear as though the same is true for tech optimism and tech pessimism: the contributing factors are the same in both situations, but it depends on how the person initially/instinctively feels about the technological situation at hand. I'm interested to see how rhetorical appeals influence people one way or another.

References (listed by order of reference)

Hochschild, Jennifer, Alex Crabill, and Maya Sen. "Technology Optimism or Pessimism: How Trust in Science Shapes Policy Attitudes toward Genomic Science." Issues in Technology Innovation 21 (2012): 1-16. Web.

"How Accurate Is the Horseshoe Theory?" Politics Stack Exchange. Stack Exchange, 7 May 2015. Web. <http://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/8209/how-accurate-is-the-horseshoe-theory#comment25084_8209>.