Synthetic biology: What does the public think?

For the third year running, Peter D. Hart Research has conducted a representative national telephone survey of 1,000 adults across the United States to discover the public’s views about synthetic biology. The research is interesting to compare to the report from the BBSRC and the EPSRC, and supported by Sciencewise-ERC dialogue on synthetic biology.

Both found a similar general attitude to the new technology, summed up by Hart as ‘tentative support and guarded optimism.’ In the UK’s in-depth workshops, participants also reported a genuine fascination with the ‘unimaginable’ idea of applying engineering to biology, which is good news for those trying to engage the public in the science. Hart also reports that awareness of synthetic biology is at 26%, up from 22% last year and 9% in 2008. This suggests that public engagement on the issue in the US, at least, has been working.

Both projects report the strong emphasis which the public places on regulation. Participants believe that self-regulation or voluntary guidelines are inadequate and that further research should be regulated by government. Participants in the UK workshops also emphasised the need for flexible, adaptive regulations which can keep up with the pace of research. Given that any synthetic pathway or micro-organism is by definition novel, one participant worried: ‘how would they know how to regulate it considering they don’t have knowledge of what is actually going on?’ While regulation is needed in order to protect against negative side-effects, participants were keen that bureaucracy should not unnecessarily hold back useful research.

Hart’s research also unearthed an interesting finding. It found that the more someone already knew about synthetic biology before the research, the more likely they were to consider the benefits as outweighing the risks. However, giving people who began the process with less knowledge a brief overview of synthetic biology made them more cautious about the risks. They were more likely to conclude that the risks outweigh the benefits. The point would need further exploration, but it highlights the dangers of assuming that people come to a dialogue process as blank sheets. More generally, it reminds us of the difficulty of making assumptions about the attitudes of the general public from a sample, particularly when the process involves information provision and deliberation.

While it is important that policy makers in both countries take these findings on board, they should not be seen in isolation. As Colin Macilwain wrote in nature last month, the public need to be involved on an ongoing basis if research into synthetic biology is going to continue.