Social Responsability of Science and Engineering
MSc. Ing. Zósimo Arévalo Velosa,
Director CAT-HTC, Centro de Alta Tecnología-High Tecnology Center, Ibagué, Colombia
PhD. Arcelio Hernández F., Universidad de Cienfuegos, Cuba.
PhD. Carlos Cañedo I., Universidad de Cienfuegos, Cuba.
Abstract - Science can be thought as the
knowledge generator for the benefit of human
kind. As knowledge is to be applied by humans,
provisions must be taken for its correct
application and implementation. Science, as
knowledge generator, has the capacity to
establish how to apply that knowledge and, to
determine how the people who implement it, must
proceed. Then, science has the ability to
determine how to prepare the professionals who
will apply and implement that knowledge.
Human well-being is the Social Responsibility of
Science and a key strategy to attain it, is to
estalish how to educate the professionals.
Keywords – Science Social responsibility, human
well-being, knowledge generation, knowledge
application, knowledge implementation,
professional formation, profesional training,
professional ethic.
I. INTRODUCTION*.
During the process of profesional formation
(training), Science is presented as the
“knowledge and scientific advancement
generator, in charge of pushing the frontiers of
knowledge”. This is a great motivation for the
young students who feel themselves invited to
become scientists, and a goal that only a few
finally reach. When professional exercise
begin, it is learned that science also, must
produces knowledge “for the benefit of the
human kind and society”. Science concept is
enriched because, not only produces knowledge
“per se” but also “what for” or better “for
whom”, gaining a human dimension to its
activity.
Later on, it is found that knowledge application
not only benefits but, also could harm. This is
shown when it is realized that, knowledge
application that benefit humans also produces
damage to their enviroment or, habitat or other
humans. Then, another task is assigned to the
Scientific Knowledge: “to advance the
frontiers of knowledge and, to apply it for the
benefit of the human kind, within the concept of
sustainable development” It has recently been
observed that, little by little, it has been
*
This work has been done by Research Group DATA
(registered, in formation) with the support of CAT-HTC,
Centro de AltaTecnología-High Technology Center,
cat.htc.zav@gmail.com
978-1-4244-6742-6/10/$26.00 ©2010
adopted as a normal behavior, to obtain
personal or group profit even if the rights of
others or the society rigths are being injured.
And, even more, consciously that injure is
being produced, the same knowledge is used to
support and justify these practices. This, does
not happen in a strange world very far from us
or our time. Examples exist and, each one of us
can identify their own, other people cases or,
general known cases.
As a consequence, nowadays, it is considered
to add to the initial presentation above: “… the
application of knowledge for the benefit of the
human kind and their society within the
concept of sustainable development and, not
only to obtain personal or group profit.” It
could be argumented that, this concept is
implicit in the ethical behavior every one has to
have and, it is not necessary to explicit it. That
is correct but, as it has been shown it is not
applied, in many cases, and then, it becomes
necessary to explicit it. Finally, it is proposed:
“Science must generate knowledge and
scientific advance for the benefit of the hunam
kind and the society, within the concept of
sustainable development and, not only to
obtain personal or group profit” Profit must
exist but, without injuring others, the society or
the environment. Profit, material or not, within
those limitations, is the great motivator to work
and, under these conditions, is perfect licit and
ethic.
Social Responsibility of Science could be
considered as the searching of knowledge for
the well-being of the society that is applied and
implemented by profesionals. Therefore,
science must rule the professional training.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section
II, Reflections and Recent Facts, some
reflections on the origins and meaning of the
Social Responsibility of Science is done and,
some Recent Facts are presented. In Section III
a Proposal, related to the profesional trainning
of freshmen, aimed to develop the Social
Responsibility of future professionals is done.
Finally, some Conclusions are presented in
Section IV.
 II. REFLECTIONS AND RECENT FACTS
A) Reflections.
The beginning of Scientific Development is
when man understand his habitat and, starts
using it to satisfy his own needs and those of
their relatives, at the dawn of the human race.
The interaction of man with its environment
started at that moment. This interaction would
affect both of them positively or negatively or,
positively for one and negatively for the other.
Notice that, nature consumes only what it is
necessary but, man consumes what it is
necessary and waste what it is not necessary1. It
can be stated that Environment Responsibility,
which some practice and some omit, was born
in the origins of human race. It should be
noticed that actions like cutting, impacting and
tools and things like levers, fire, wheel, that
apply primitive knowledge for the benefit of
humans, were utilized since the begining of the
mankind. At that moment, the requirement to
use nature´s resources to manufacture or to
produce these tools became a need. But also,
things that affect the habitat like, noise from
impact, smoke from fire and organic
remainders, that now are consider as
contamination factors, appeared.
Scientific progress became faster at the
begining of Industrial Revolution on the last
part of 1700’s and beginings of 1800’s. The
knowledge gained up to then, was used to
develop machinery that facilitates work and
relief man from heavy physical efforts. The
advances of knowledge, made possible the
integration of previous devices and tools into
machinery responsible for the Industrial
Revolution. Of course, this was a development
proccess instead of an independent event. A
greater knowledge and application, required a
greater interaction with environment and
society and, a greater impact on them. The need
to use more of the nature´s elements to
fabricate the machinery increased and, an
increment of contaminant events was produced.
Additionally to the already known
contaminants, which increment with the
population density, the non-organic and long-
biological-degradation-time contaminants
appeared.
Finally, in the 1800’s and 1900’s, big scientific
and technological developments were reached
which, implied a greater interrelation among
man and environmental systems. This larger
interaction stared at the beginings of 1900’s
1
“Present financial situation is the consequence to live
over our financial posibilities. Climatic crisis is the result
to live over the planet resources”, Yvo de Boer, 2009
General Secretary of United Nations Convention on
Climatic Change, available Abr.11/10,
http://assets.panda.org/downloads/climate_deal_wwf_espana_lr.pdf
.
and, only up to mid’s 1990´s, world in general,
became conscious and accepted the great
negative impact produced by the inappropriate
use of technology. The world leaders’ worries,
are recorded in the International Meetings and
Agreements of 1972, 1992, 1997, 2002, 2005,
2007 y 2009 [1]. At the beginnig of 2000’s, it
was recognized that some of the provoked
enviromental changes, might be close to a non-
return point. Initial changes would produce an
in-chain reaction that neither, science nor
humans would be able to stop [1,2]. Two
current examples of this chain reaction are the
Global Economic disaster of 2008 and the
collapse of oil Deep Horizon Platform of 2010.
The first started with the non-posibility of
people to pay their mortages; see footnote 1 on
financial situation, and ended with the collapse
of the word’s economy. A replica of it is being
attended at the present time, 2010, by the
European Union members. The second
example, that has impacted the world wide
opinion, started at the end of April 2010, with
the collapse of the oil Deep Horizon Platform
in front of the Gulf of Mexico coast of United
States [3]. When, will it be controlled? Only
the pluggin of the well´s main escape, to stop
the spill, took about four weeks. Final pluggin
was projected for about three months from the
dissaster and, the ecological damages chain
reaction and human impacts already started; see
footnote 1 on climatic crisis and previous
reflection on used and wasted.
At the end of 1900´s and begining of 2000’s, an
over-production of consumption goods and
services, neccessary and unneccessary ones,
not only produced a big negative impact on the
nature´s resources and enviroment but, a new
social phenomenon appears: the accumulation
of enormous profits due to the over-production
and trading of those goods and services, the
necessary and unnecessary ones. This
phenomenon not only produced a large
environmental impact but also, a profound
negative social impact. The end of it, is the
well known global economical catastrophe of
2008 and its replica of 2010[4,5] both
mentioned, with the serious consequences that
these events produced, during their existence
and at the end of it. These reflections confirm
the initial statement: “man consumes what he
needs and waste what he does not need”
It is obvious then, to think on the need to
enlarge the Social Responsibility Concept as:
Social Responsibility of Science in general and,
of each one of us in particular, is to bring
benefit to the Society, their members and
environment to improve their status and
personal and collective way of living and, not
to negativelly affect them neither, because the
application of knowledge by itself nor, for its
consequences, technical, economical or any
other.
B)Recent facts
By fortune, after the international recognition
of the environmental problem, several
important events have happened:
• Since 1958, after the identification and
recognition of the environmental problem,
four international meetings have been
organized with the participation of the,
mainly, political and economic leaders of the
more developed countries and, in the last
one, with the participation of “under-develop
countries”[1,2]. Unfortunatelly, the advances
have been very limited because of the
economic implications that neither, the
goverments nor the companies are willing to
pay.
This lack of results is an invitation to
academic and professional leaders to
intervene. Finally, they are the ones who
conceive, develop and implement the
proccesses and the machinery to work with
and therefore, they are the ones that must
produce the rigth interaction of man,
environment, and social systems. The same
knowledge and abilities they apply to
produce those proccesses and machinery, are
the ones to avoid the negative consequences.
In other words, they have the knowledge, the
capacity and the obligation to give solutions
to the needs and protection to the enviroment
and society. We do not have to wait for the
political and economic leaders to solve the
problem.
• The IEEE conscious of the importance of the
relationship between Technology and
Society, started in March 1972 his “Society
on Social Implications of Technology” and
his “IEEE Technology & Society Magazine”
to replace and give more relevance to the
existing “Committee on Social Impications
of Technology” [6] eventhoguh, other IEEE
entities and publications where already
involved in socio-technological activities.
According to its Constitution the field of
interest of this Society is: “the impact of
technology (as embodied by the fields of
interest of IEEE) on society, including both
positive and negative effects, the impact of
society on the engineering profession, the
history of the societal aspects of electro-
technology, and professional, social and
economic responsibility in the practice of
engineering and its related technology."
• In 1982 appeared, in France, the concept of
humanitarian use of engineering with the
association “Ingénieurs Sans Frontièrs”2.
Since then, similar associations have been
created in Spain, Italy and other countries in
Europe and around the world. Their
objectives are from: aid in engineering
projects of needed countries, to discussions
on ethics and social responsibility of
engineers [7, 8]. The IEEE, recently, through
a rebuilding fund leads an engineering effort
to reconstruct Haiti electrical and other
facilities after their earthquake [9].
• In current professional and academic events,
besides the professional topics, there are one
topic on Social Implications of Technlogy
and other on Enviromental Impacts of
Technology also called Green Technologies
[10,11,12].
The latest version of the “Real World
Engineering Problems-RWEP” 2010, [10] is
devoted to trainning (preparation) of future
engineering professionals in social issues as
it can be seen in their call to participate:
“IEEE continues its program to develop
curricula for use with first-year students
studying electrical engineering, computer
engineering, computer science, biomedical
engineering and electrical engineering
technology. In its fourth successful year the
program seeks high-quality, hands-on, team-
based projects that focus on real-world
problems with solutions that benefit society.
The projects are expected to make the related
IEEE fields of interest more relevant to first-
year students, and to illustrate how the work
of engineers and computer scientists directly
impacts society. The ideal project will allow
students to discover the importance of a
contemporary problem, and excite their
interest in creative solutions. It will
demonstrate how and why technical methods
work, rather than simply providing a recipe
for a solution. It will allow the students to
discover underlying complex engineering
and science principles, and provide
motivation for further study and
engagement.”
• Universities around the world, in North
America, Europe, Australia, Latin America,
are including education on sustainability or,
in social responsability of the engineering to
their students. Much debate is still done
about the real benefits, consequences and
responsabilities of this effort, specially when
the “under-develop” countries are involved
as recipients of the effort[13,14,15].
2
“The birth of ISF (Ingenieurs Sans Frontiers) occurred on
the premises of the “Ecole Nationale des Ponts et
Chaussées,” an engineering school considered one of the
most prestigious in France.” [7].
• The Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
working with other disciplines are producing
advanced results to monitor the worlds’
environmental parameters in order to know
them and, then to be able to predict their
consequences. The following are discussed
in very recent literature:
¾ European Soil Moisture and Ocean
Salinity (SMOS) Mission, a geophysical
variables measurement from a space
satellite for the Global Water Cycle [16,
17].
¾ The Surface Water and Ocean
Topography Mission (SWOT): Observing
Terrestrial Surface Water and Oceanic
Submesoscale Eddies to determine ocean
and land water levels [18].
¾ Hydrologic cycle in atmosphere to predict
hurricanes and storms [19].
¾ Land observing and monitoring climate
change, to monitor water, carbon, global
climate change, to do cartography and,
observe disasters [20].
It can be seen that besides the not very
successfully attemps of the world political and
economical leaders to find solutions to the
problems derived from the inadequate use of
Science an Technology, there exist an
important movement among Scientists,
Professionals and Educational leaders to solve
the problem on its roots; the professional
actions and, even more important, the
formation of future professionals on their
Social Responsibility.
III. PROPOSAL
A)Basis of the Proposal
After the revision of the Social Responsibilities
of the Science, the known ones and those
derived from previous reflections, the
following is proposed, for discussion and
application, as a first strategy for its
implementation.
Science must develop scientific knowledge to
solve social needs and problems, within the
concept of respect for society, their customs
and principles, sustained development, social
progress and benefit and not, with the only
objective of personal and group profit. One
strategy to acomplish this goal is to determine
how future professional must be educated in
the subject of Social Responsibility.
Aparently, science is being assigned additional
responsibilities but, this is only an
identification and integration of several tasks
science already attends, one way or the other.
The proposal means that Science must
integrally attend the social problems and needs.
To fulfill the stated proposal, science first
develops the knowledge and establishes how to
implement it. A good recent example of how
science and technology should attend human
needs is the survival of Haitis’s Internet
Communications during its recent eartquake
[21].
Second step on this strategy is, that the
preparation of the future professionals, in each
one of their levels technical to profesional, in
charge of implementing the scientific
knowledge applications, must be done in a
simultaneous and complementary technical-
and-ethical way. It can be argued that this has
already being stipulated, establised and it is
being done. Daily evidences and multiple
counter examples, show that the results are not
the expected ones. It is neccesary to realize that
teaching metodology being used, separates the
technical knowledge from its ethical and social
responsabilities or, even more, never integrates
them. In extreme cases, even the technical
knowledge is separated from its real application
[10]. Industrials allways complain on the lack
of real experience of young professionals out of
universities.
This second step is designed to integraly teach
the future professional, rigth from the
beginning of his career, the three fundamental
dimensions of science that he(she) must
develop: the professional (knowledge), the
applicative and the ethical. Those three
caractheristics, will assure his(her) competence
as a professional. Starting this exercise from
the very beginning of his(her) education,
he(she) will have time enough, during his
career, to understand, internalize, practice and
improve his(her) professional competence.
During the trainning a methodology like
“Educate and Demand” would be neccesary to
acomplish this objective.
A Teaching-Learning Proccess for freshmen,
that takes into consideration the following
aspects, is proposed 3:
• Identification of society needs and problems.
• Present status and tendencies of, science and
its technological applications.
3
Several of the ideas presented here were implemented by
two of the autors in the Engineering Electronics Program of
University of Ibagué, Colombia, since its inception in 1995
through 2008. In that implementation, emphasis was done
on the knowledge applicability and integrallity since the
begigning of the carrer. One of the advanced courses on
Digital Design was also specifically conducted under this
methodology. The Program received its High Quality
Acreditaction from Colombia Government, through the
Council of National Acreditation-CAN, in 2009. The basis
of the model presented in this section was submited for pre-
screening, at the IEEE-WREP (Real-World Engineering
Projects) 2010 contest. The version presented here is an
update which includes Social Responasbility besides,
applicability and integrallity.
• Trajectory and expectations of student.
• Needed resources to implement this proposal.
• Selection of a need to be attended, proposed
solution and its social and enviromental
implications.
• End disposal of the proposed solution.
The base of the proposal is to identify a need
and to create a conceptual valid and realizable
solution within the principles of Social
Responsability. This proposal is a set of steps,
that conforms a Proccess, in which each step
has two parts:
1. Instructions for the development of the step.
2. Understanding of the academic conceptual
knowledge which supports the development
of conceptual solution for the selected
problem.
At this stage, there is no need to get into the
technical and specific details of the solution.
The proposed solution identifies the
funtionalities and their interrelations so that, it
becomes a workable system. The proposal
requires only conceptual knowledge to be
applied to the solution; advanced specific
knowledge and procedures are not required at
this moment. That advanced knowledge is
given during the career, according to the
curriculum design, always taking as a reference
the need to implement the identified
functionalities of the projected conceptual
solution. The “Top-Down” desing concept is
being used here. The objective is to create, in
the student, from the very beginning, the way
how to deal with technical methods in
engineering rather than, convert him(her) in an
“formulae applicator” and made him(her)
consious of his social responsability.
The selected problem and its solution, can be
maintained, revised and improved during the
career and even, can become the graduation
project. This model requires, previously to its
implementation, to identify expectations,
knowledge an abilities of each student and
apply leveling plans whenever needed. To
guarantee the correctness, realizability and
continuity of the project up to its finalization,
the direct supervision of one faculty member is
required. It is highly recommended that the
project is under the area of research of the
faculty. These model allows the inmediate
integration of teaching, researching and
involvement of students in research activities.
B) Teaching-Learning Proccess for freshmen:
1. Identification of student expecations,
knowledge and abilites and, establisment
of the needed leveling plan.
2. Identification of social problems and
needs. Selection and statement of the
problem.
3. Familiarization with areas, sub-areas,
topics of science, their scope and
limitations.
4. Identification of specific areas and topics
of science (professions) needed to solve
the selected problem.
5. Identification of engineering career(s)
needed to solve the problem.
6. Identification of topics, within the
electrical-electronic engineering, to solve
the problem.
7. Statement of the conceptual solution wich
must include the identification of the social
and enviromental impact and, the end
disposal of the proposed solution.
The teaching and instructions needed to
develop each of the above mentioned steps
must be accompanied with conceptual
academic teaching on those scientifical and
professional concepts needed for the students to
establish the solution of the selected problem.
Examples of these academical concepts are:
basic concepts of Physics, Chemistry and
Electricity-Electronics and, examples focused
on the solution of real engineering problems4.
Complementary academic topics like the
following, are needed: fundamental verbal and
written comunications in spanish and a second
appropiate language, basic computational
abilities to support the academic work, good
abilities on basic secondary school
mathematics. The knowledge and abilities, here
discussed, are fundamental for the student to
construct and propose real, viable and usable
solution to the stated problem. The work is
done in groups to develop the ability of team
work and, evaluation and feedback are
permanent, both for the team and for the
individual.
The advanced knowledge and abilities are
given during the rest of the career, being
always focused on the detailed functionalities
of the Proposed Solution to the Selected
Problem which, can be adjusted as necessary.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
• The topic of Social Responsibility of Science
and Engineering has been examined and, it
has been found convenient to integrate all of
its facets, to better fulfill its proposed social
function: To Solve the needs of human beings
to give them, a real and integral well-being.
• It has been noticed, once more, how integral
professional trainning, in all professional
4
In the 1995, 1998, 2002 curriculums of the Electronics
Program (see footnote 3), several of this aspects where
included in the first semester. By then, the present day
clarity and approach of the model did not exist. Later in
2006, because institutional policies, this curriculums where
modified, to return to the more classical ones in this aspect.
As much as possible of the original ideas were kept.
 levels presently recognized, from technical to
professional, is fundamental to the practice
of the Social Responsibility.
• A strategy and methodology is proposed for
freshmen, to implement the professional
integral formation in engineering from the
very beginning of the career up to the
graduation.
• The proposed model is ready to be expanded
to other engineering and, possibly other
professions.
As a final conslusion:
The good understanding and practice or Social
Responsibility, by each one of the members of
society, would allow people to devote all their
capacities and efforts to permanently produce
sustainable development for them, instead of
being forced to be permanently negociating
surviving conditions, or defending from others,
or makinging the war to each other.
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