Team:Heidelberg/HumanPractice/Survey

From 2013.igem.org

Revision as of 18:33, 27 October 2013 by Fanny (Talk | contribs)

Survey. What Society thinks of Synthetic Biology.

The public opinion has great impact on the future of any new technology. Thus, we as researchers (-to-be) might be able to offer solutions for major issues society is currently facing. Yet, we depend on the approval and goodwill of the public, to realize our ideas. Moreover, national and international legal frameworks limit every scientific action, which again, lie in the hand of the people. Thus, communication with a broader cross section of society plays a key role for the success of a project. According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, communication (from Latin commūnicāre, meaning "to share") is the activity of conveying information through the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, visuals, signals, writing, or behavior. It is the meaningful exchange of information between two or more living creatures. To promote the dialogue with society, we organized a talk evening addressing the question "On the Way to a Synthetic Future?" in cooperation with the Biotechnological Students Initiative e.V.and the Helmholtz-Initiative for Synthetitic Biology, where we received more than 100 guests. Of course we were highly curious about our audience's opinion on synthetic biology and therefore asked our guests to give us feedback via a survey, in which 55 people took part.

Figure 1: General Structure of Analyzed Test Group.
The analyzed test group shows a balanced gender distribution. The average test person is 23.7 years old, whereas women are slightly older than men (24.2 compared to 23.3 years) and correspondingly holds a high school degree. This is followed by secondary school certificate ("middle school") and the bachelor degree.

By establishing a common language and common basic knowledge on synthetic biology, we enabled everyone in the audience to fully understand the science. Our guests, non-scientists like everyday citizens, students from local high-schools, parents and grandparents as well as scientists-to-be and scientists from different fields, participated lifely in controvercial discussions with the lecturers, either by directly asking questions or by filling in the prepared question cards, which were then read out by our moderator Alexandra Moosmann from genius science & communication. To statistically analyze our audience's optinion of snythetic biology, everyone was asked to fill in a short questionnaire. Following the talks, we invited the lecturers and our audience to engage in further discussion over snacks and refreshments.


Figure 2: Knowledge on Synthetic Biology.
Following our talk evening addressing the question "On the Way to Synthetic Biology?", the audience was asked to estimate their knowledge on synthetic biology. 91% of the test group could define the term with great (32.7%) or intermediate (58.2%) certainty. Only 9% were more (5.4%) or very (3.6%) uncertain.
Figure 3: Associations with the Term Synthetic Biology.
Following our talk evening addressing the question "On the Way to Synthetic Biology?", we captured, what our audience associates with synthetic biology. Most people chose scientific options like "Genetic Engineering" or "Pharmaceutical Research" (shown in blue), which have indefinite connotations. Clearly negative terms like "Biological Weapons", "Killer Viruses" and "Playing God" (shown in red) were only selected by a minority. Interestingly, nearly 50% of the audience associated aspects such as "Environmentalism" and "Alternative Energies" (shown in green).


Figure 4: Potential of Synthetic Biology and Implications.
Right: The analyzed test group was finally asked to evaluate the potential of synthetic biology. Nearly everyone was interested in synthetic biology (98%, ++ and +, blue bars) and considers the issue important (96.1% - and - -, green bars). 90% (++ 56.4% and + 34.5%, red bars) of the audience is confident that synthetic biology could solve the major challenges society is facing today. Interestingly, There are two different opinions on the controlability of synthetic biology in our group (yellow bars) and on potential risks (purple bars).
Left: The audience was furthermore asked to draw conclusions on our corporate social responsibility their future behaviour. All people questioned recommend to invest more money in research (100% ++ and +, blue bars). Additionally, the majority demands more public education (92.8% ++ and +, blue bars) and to make all knowledge public (75.9% ++ and +, green bars). At the same time, the audience was divided on whether to request more regulations for research (yellow bars). Yet, no one concluded that research activities should be stopped after all (100% - and - -, purple bars).

Thanks to

Retrieved from "http://2013.igem.org/Team:Heidelberg/HumanPractice/Survey"