Esiste un 'giusto posto' per la scienza e l'innovazione? Conversazione con Silvio Funtowicz e Andrea Saltelli

Interview published in the book "Scienziati in affanno? RRI in teoria e nelle pratiche". Here a brief abstract of the book. For some years now, scientists applying for grants under the framework programme Horizon 2020, must be compliant with the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) frame, anticipating the possible impacts of the project outputs and illustrating how the planned activities will produce innovations which are "socially desirable and acceptable". Open science, reflexivity, ethics, public involvement, gender perspective, sustainability, social justice, are some of the trajectories that inspire a "responsible" research and innovation. However, what is RRI from researchers' perspective? Is it a bureaucratic constraint to which scientists must submit their activity or can it be an opportunity for them to rethink the way and the meaning of doing research today? The book Scientists under pressure? RRI in theory and in practices explores the different meanings of the RRI approach, inside and outside the academy and the European policy, with a focus on the Italian context. Although it has emerged in Europe only recently as a frame, the underlying concepts of RRI are rooted in a long standing debate about a society pervaded by science and technology that, other than benefits, also involve risks and raise controversial issues. In this situation, where signals of distrusts are emerging, it has become evident that scientific innovation can no longer be kept out of a democratic dialectic in which all the components of society build a shared vision of the future.