Democracy is changing, and people are demanding more input into the things that affect their daily lives. Public engagement in RRI can help fill this demand but only if it goes beyond encouraging data collection to facilitating people’s ability to influence science. So said Lars Klüver, who has been involved with public engagement and technology assessment since the 1980s and is currently director of the Danish Board of Technology Foundation and coordinator for Engage 2020, CIMULACT and HBP Citizen Consultations. Klüver recently spoke at the RRI Tools’ second Train the Trainers workshop, which took place at CosmoCaixa Barcelona (July 4–6, 2016).

Let’s get scientific about RRI. Let us put into question if there is scientific evidence about the association between ‘responsible research’ (as defined by the 6 pillars) and social impact of research. The field of ‘science of science’ may have some answers to this. This discipline seeks scientific evidence on how science works to help policy makers optimise societal impact of research. The methods usually adopted are combinations of quality research case studies, questionnaires, bibliometrics, data-mining and narrative review. Now, the question I propose in this post is whether there is scientific evidence that investing in responsible research will deliver more societal impacts.

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Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is a notoriously complex governance framework for research and innovation (R&I). It encompasses various aspects, better known by their EC-name as key dimensions: governance, ethics, gender, public engagement, science education and open access. Multifarious as this list may be, the core idea that distinguishes so-called Responsible R&I from R&I simpliciter is that the former is done with an eye to societal challenges, and that in doing so it takes on board the lessons of decades of research on the governance of science, the relationship between science and society and, more specifically, the role of science in solving complex societal issues.

These lessons, again, are of course manifold, but in short they can be boiled down to a relatively short list of RRI-commandments: include, reflect, adapt and be open!