SAN FRANCISCO, DECEMBER 2003 -- The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded The Hybrid Vigor Institute a one-year Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) toward improving the methodologies of risk analysis for genomics and other advanced sciences and technologies.

Titled "Understanding Genomics Risks: An Integrated Scenario and Analytic Approach," the project was funded by the Decision, Risk, and Management Science (DRMS) program of NSF's Division of Social and Economic Sciences (SES).

SGERs are 12- to 18-month awards, granted at the discretion of individual NSF officers for "high risk, high reward" projects that could have significant implications for the field, but that might not otherwise be funded through the more conservative peer review process.

Principal investigators for the study are Denise Caruso, executive director of the Hybrid Vigor Institute, and Baruch Fischhoff, an internationally known risk expert and University Professor in the Departments of Social & Decision Sciences, and of Engineering & Public Policy, at Carnegie Mellon University. As an author of some of the most-cited research in the field, Fischhoff frequently advises industry and government on risk-related issues. He is president-elect of the Society for Risk Analysis, past president of the Society for Risk Analysis, and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

The catalyst for the project was a three-day meeting in June 2003, co-hosted by Hybrid Vigor and U.C. Berkeley's Roundtable for the International Economy. Moderated by Caruso, Fischhoff and Warner North, a world-recognized risk practitioner and expert in probabilistic risk analysis, the meeting brought together 20 international experts from diverse disciplines -- from molecular biology to computer and political science, anthropology and economics -- to discuss how best to analyze the new classes of risks created by genetic interventions, some of which would be possible for the first time in history.

The group's consensus was that the utility of traditional risk analysis methods was limited by the deep uncertainties and ambiguous circumstances presented by nascent sciences such as genomics. One approach to overcoming this limitation would be to find a disciplined way for risk analysis to incorporate more speculative and subjective input.

"Our starting point was that traditional analytic approaches are best suited for addressing risks that we can comfortably quantify to some degree, such as whether a genetically modified substance is toxic," said Caruso. "But because genomic researchers themselves freely admit they know very little about many of the mechanisms that govern genes, whether 'natural' or engineered, we realized that we needed to extend the methodology to accommodate risks that might fall between these very large gaps in scientific knowledge."

Caruso and Fischhoff hope to make progress toward this new methodology by integrating risk analysis with scenario planning, using specific genetic interventions and genomic technologies as context.

"Often a decision maker's first exposure to a new, untested technology is a story -- from either a critic or a proponent -- of how the technology will develop," said Fischhoff. "While stories are a weak form of evidence, they can be useful in the decision-making process. Some of their most disciplined use in decision making is found in scenario planning. However, it typically lacks the precision demanded by risk analysis."

Unlike traditional analysis, which assigns probabilities to potential courses of events, scenario planning strives to create credible narratives that are then used to stimulate strategic thinking. Scenarios are widely used in industry and in government -- notably in defense agencies, whose "war game" scenarios since the September 11th attack on the U.S. have examined the challenges of a biological attack on U.S. soil, as well as other potential disasters.

A credible integration of the two methods could be a powerful boon to genomics researchers, public and private decision makers, and the public. "Existing research and practice led us to see the value of such integration, some of which was already underway at our NSF-supported Center for Integrated Assessment of Human Dimensions of Global Change," says Fischhoff. "The collaboration with Hybrid Vigor has provided us access to an exceptional set of experts, whose input and acceptance are critical to any meaningful application."

The project's investigators expect that the project, if successful, will have value for other complex problems involving fundamental uncertainties, such as those posed by nanotechnology.

Caruso initiated research on the subject of risk, public policy, and genomics in 2001, as a project spanning Hybrid Vigor's Health Determinants and Earth Systems programs. The two resulting reports -- the Hybrid Vigor Journal "Risk as Continuum: A Redefinition of Risk in the Post-Genome World" (February 2002), and "Risk: The Art and the Science of Choice," a white paper commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation and published in October 2002 -- are available at http://hybridvigor.net/publications.pl?s=health.

Caruso is also in the process of writing a book on the subject, tentatively titled "Redefining Risk in the Post-Genome World," to be published by Doubleday in 2004.

The Hybrid Vigor Institute is a nonprofit (501C3) educational organization dedicated to the study and practice of interdisciplinary research. Carnegie Mellon University is home to one of the most highly regarded risk and decision analysis communities in the world.

The Hybrid Vigor Institute may be reached at mailto:info@hybridvigor.org, or by telephone at +1 415 543-8113.

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