Emerging collaborations between social and natural scientists face challenges, as you acknowledge (Nature 462, 825–826, 2009). But, like A. D. Manning and J. Fischer in Correspondence (Nature 463, 425; 2010), you sidestep a practical question that keeps many laboratory doors closed: what if interactions with 'soft' scientists harm the quality of my 'hard' research?

The Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (ASU) has collaborated with natural scientists since 2005. It also hosts the Socio-Technical Integration Research project (http://cns.asu.edu/stir), which embeds social scientists in 20 labs across ten nations on three continents — represented by three authors of this letter, plus the project's coordinator. Social researchers learn the theory and observe the methods of their laboratory counterparts, but they also introduce a protocol that unpacks social and ethical dimensions of the lab science itself in a real-time, hands-on, collaborative manner. The social scientists, their methods and enquiries become embedded in the laboratory during each 12-week engagement study.

We find that such integrative activities can trigger changes in laboratory practices — expanding the values and questions considered, and the alternatives that are perceived as viable. For example, reflections on responsible innovation generated novel ideas for antenna structures and nanoparticle synthesis for researchers at ASU's Center for Single Molecule Biophysics. Such developments often advance research and sometimes advance deliberation on public values. For laboratory scientists, thinking and talking about the broader dimensions of their work in an integrated way need not entail a sacrifice in productivity. Rather, efforts to enhance scientific creativity and societal responsiveness can be mutually reinforcing.