Socially Responsible Research as a Critical Path to Foster Rational and Ethical Analyses in Biased Public Debates: The Example of a Renewable Energy

The development of new technologies crossed more and more by means of inquiries to the public. At the same time, the researchers should be more and more led to explore socially responsible research principles to take into account aspects like supplies, risks and social perception of the systems which they allow. A certain number of data was calculated from Life Cycles Analysis, allowing confrontations in relation to citizen opinions expressed in the case of the Aeolian energy system. The work linked with this paper agrees with some published results, but also highlights a trend of certain scientists coming from the “hard” sciences to assert opinions located outside the techno-economic reality. This result does not meet for the general population which agrees better to not know. This unforeseen situation asks then the important question of links to be developed between science, technology and society.