Although public trust in science is a recent preoccupation for some, it has been a problem for decades in the United States. Republicans began to trust science less after the COVID-19 pandemic, but marginalized communities … have long questioned whether the research enterprise is really working to improve their lives. … A particular area of concern is that emerging technologies don’t adequately address public needs despite the time, resources, and brainpower that scientists and engineers dedicate to developing them.
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What if … university-based scientists and engineers tried to repair public trust by adopting a more inclusive understanding of technological innovation itself? Nowadays, we tend to focus on new, high-tech, transformative, and material interventions. But what if we adopted a more expansive approach that takes low-tech and even incremental solutions seriously …?
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University scientists and engineers are understandably horrified by the recent damage to the US research and innovation ecosystem and the relative public silence on the matter. But we can resist our reputations as elitist, out of touch, and working against public interests by adopting a broader definition of technological innovation ….
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