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Team:Heidelberg/Project/Science Communication
From 2008.igem.org
Science Communication
Introduction
It’s the end of the summer vacations. Most of our friends, family and fellow students come back from trips to the beaches of southern France, or climbing the mountains of Switzerland. Of course they ask us what we did during this time. Then we answer enthusiastically, that we will work in the lab for the next three months, to genetically modify bacteria to sense and destroy pathogens. And then we’ll look into helpless faces – in the best case! Some also show concerns and scepticism regarding the idea of genetic engineering and the aim, to create bacteria, which are able to kill others.
This leads to the wordy and sometimes exhausting part of the conversation: We have to explain, what synthetic biology actually is, how the modification of the bacteria is done and that these modified bacteria do no harm to the environment and to us. Very often we have to justify our work with the reference to the practical medical use our system could have in the future.
Every scientist probably knows situations like this, in which you become aware of how few things the public (to which friends and family as ‘non-scientists’ belong) knows about biology in general and biotechnology, not to mention synthetic biology in particular. This was the flash point for us to think about the communication of our work to a greater public in the context of the iGEM project. We wanted to find out how much the public knows and how they feel about biotechnology and genetic engineering, and how they use media to learn about it. Furthermore we wanted to ask scientists about there opinion towards media contacts and the publication of their work for a broad audience. This knowledge should serve as a basis for the next steps: to publish our work in the context of synthetic biology to the ‘man on the street’ in a way, that he’ll get interested in the new scientific field and is able to develop his own opinion about it. This should also prevent the formation of prejudices and negative associations connected with synthetic biology, which will be a real thread to the work of us scientists in the future. We laid one focus on school pupils, because they will build the public of tomorrow. Since we are living in Germany, we mostly deal with specific problems and examples we find in our country. This also makes sense, because our practical work, except the parts done in the internet, has a range restricted to Germany and especially Heidelberg. But nevertheless, you’ll see that the general problem we deal with is the same in most of your countries.
Why should scientists publish their work?
One reply you get, if you talk about the popularization of their work to scientists, is, that it is not important, if the average citizen understands, what one is doing, What really matters is, that fellow scientists understand, what the work is all about – and that does not require additional devices.
We resolutely have to repel this opinion for several reasons:
First, one big attempt of many projects in synthetic biology is to create applications like food, biofuels, drugs or medical therapies. These applications will be used not only by the scientific elite of a country, but also by the public. For example the benefits of genetic engineering and synthetic biology (we will talk about these two together, because the public in our country knows close to nothing about the differences) in the field of medical applications is enormous. 15% of the commercially available drugs in Germany are made by recombinant techniques, and surely for the development of many other drugs, the techniques of genetic engineering are used as well. But if the average citizen goes to the doctor and gets some medication, he is in most cases not aware of this fact. In our opinion, this is not right. Everybody has the right to understand, how the things he takes as medication or eats as food have been produced and how they act in his body. And this is a right everybody should make use of and inform himself, for the following reason:
We are living in a country with a democratic system. Therefore every citizen, if a scientist or not, has the right and the duty to decide over laws, which strengthen or restrict certain parts of science and biotechnology. This can be through the decision over the funding of certain projects with tax money, or even more directly through laws concerning the borders of research. For example in Germany, scientists are very restricted in the use of stem cells, and are not allowed to make embryos to get stem cells for their research. But to responsibly decide over such laws, one has to have a basic understanding for modern biosciences (or for finances, if you have to decide on a bill to support your banks with money). You need this understanding to be aware of risks and possibilities of these technologies and considering them to build an own opinion as the basis for a decision.
Another point is, that many scientific groups are (at least partly) paid from public funds. So every citizen of the country contributes to this scientific research with his/her tax money. Therefore they have the right to know and understand, what this money is spend on. And this is not easy. Because in contrast to the building of a bridge or an institute, synthetic biology does not always produce something visible or experiencable. An important research issue is to understand systems and create methods first. With this premises it is possible to invent applications later. But the connection between basic research and application is not always seen by the public and is also not always demonstrated by the researchers.
Last but not least one important point, which also leads us to the next topic of public knowledge about bioscience: Ignorance easy leads to fear, especially if the own health or nutrition is concerned. One can see this in the public discussion about green biotechnology, which includes the development of genetically modified plants. In Germany, there are many people that fear and reject green biotechnology so much, that they regularly destroy the genetically engineered plants on proving grounds to inhibit research in this field and thereby destroy the long lasting work of this scientists every year. Prominent persons like the Prince of Wales do not hesitate to talk about their concerns about green biotechnology, even if most of the statements are unproven and mostly unlikely:
"And if they think its somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another then again count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time." (Prinz Charles, 08.2008, Daily Telegraph)
To be honest: A critical and unprejudiced discussion about possibilities and risks of green biotechnology between supporters and opponents of green biotechnology is not possible any more in Germany, and we assume this situation to be true for many other countries, too. One main reason why we think the popularization of synthetic biology is so important, especially in this early state of the research field is, that we have to avoid making the same mistakes that happened with green biotechnology and lead to this situation of prejudices and factoids. For this aim, an intensive communication with the public is needed, so the following discussion about synthetic biology is based on profound knowledge rather than on prejudices. One recent study of the Redearch Center Jülich in Germany, published in Nature, showed, that the circumstances for this task are positive: More scientists feel that they benefit from work with the media and popularizing their work than it would have been assumed.
What the public thinks
To get a feeling for what the public in Heidelberg knows and thinks about biotechnology and synthetic biology, we made a survey under 100 randomly picked pedestrians in Heidelberg (Survey-Public).
So, what we learned is, that synthetic biology aims to make artificial life/animals, for example frog bacteria. You wonder what that might be. We too. If we found out, maybe we manage to make some. In clear words: The public in Heidelberg as an example has no idea, what synthetic biology is and what it works on. Some people are very inventive in trying to find an answer. Many make good guesses in using the word origin, like: Synthetic biology may be a research field that aims to create artificial life. But what could mean practically, most people have no idea and cannot even imagine it as you can see in the statement above. Because we assumed it to be like this due to our research in advance, we mainly asked in our survey about topics concerning genetic engineering, because this is the basis for synthetic biology and people can connect something with it.
What has to be said is, that most interviewed pedestrians do not connect positive feeling with it: Two thirds of the interviewed answered, that they associate concerns or fear with the term genetic engineering (‘Gentechnik’). Only one fifth had positive associations like hope and confidence.
The basic knowledge about genetic engineering was better than the European average: 87,5% knew, that ordinary tomatoes have genes (and not only genetically engineered ones). Only have of the European citizens answers this question right . This and our other results show, that the people in Heidelberg have a better basic knowledge than average. This is easy to explain: As a university city with a huge amount of students as citizens and with many scientific institutes, one can not consider Heidelberg as representative for the German or European public. Therefore we always are aware of the fact that we have to fetch the people at a much more basic point of knowledge than our survey results would suggest.
Of course there is a great difference of knowledge between the public and scientists about synthetic biology and its basics. But this is no wonder, because the biosciences are a still growing research area – there are so many different subjects and each works in such a detail, that not even a scientist can really understand all those topics. And how can we expect this of a non-scientist? We have to be aware of the fact, that synthetic biology is only a small are of the biosciences, even if it may be the middle of our world. And there are also the other sciences, like chemistry and physics. And social sciences, like sociology, economics and so forth. So somebody who did not study biosciences may only have learned something about it at school or through the media. And if you consider the enormous amount of information that has to be taught to school children in all those different topics and more, and that has to be dealt with by the media, it is not surprising, that the public in general has little knowledge about the basics of biology and biotechnology. That can only mean one thing for us as scientists: If we want to make the public understand what we are doing, we have to fetch them where they are. That means that we have to explain our work in very easy words, but not loose the scientific aspect. It is also highly important, that we do not try to influence the audience in their opinion: We have to talk about the chances as well as the risks. This needs great responsibility and honesty from the scientists towards the public.
What scientists think
How to improve this knowledge and present synthetic biology and our project to the public
The questions we asked us were: How can we contact the public? Which groups do we want to talk to? How do we raise interest, which is the basis for all communication and mediation of knowledge? How can we explain our project in a way, that everybody can understand it, and also that there are no prejudices or fears raised? And how can we create awareness for the benefits, costs and risks of our research for the public?
In general we do not think that there is a communication standard which is right for every situation and project. We made the experience that the best thing is to use as many media channels as possible, because the public also uses various media to inform itself (really?)
Since we already have a platform in the internet to inform about our project, which is the wiki, we wanted to expand it in a way that not only biotechnologists, but also interested laypersons can understand, what we did over the summer. Therefore we built a guiding system to find background information about the theory of our project and synthetic biology, which we also provided. This guiding system has a recognizable item, which we called Phips the Phage, which links to our project. This icon especially should address young people with its comic style.
Furthermore, to also address to a greater audience in Germany and not relying on the internet, we collaborated with one of the biggest newspapers in Germany, the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). They will report about our project, about iGEM and about synthetic biology in two big articles. Additionally, we broadcasted information on our team through one radio interview with … and two television reports with Campus TV and Prometheus TV.
We also have made a brochure about these topics, available in German and English, which can be downloaded on our website and is distributed by the members of our team at their schools and at scientific meatings.
The above media still do address mostly adults. But we especially wanted to talk to school pupils, because they are not as prejudiced towards genetic engineering as many adults are and they will bet he future citizens of our country, in a time when synthetic biology will possibly be a much bigger issue in public debate than today– so it is very important that they have a healthy understanding of synthetic biology and an unprejudiced opinion. Therefore we carried out an open day for school classes, were we told them about synthetic biology, about iGEM and about our project. We also let them do experiments in the lab, so that they could directly experience what biotechnological research is like.
Media Work
[http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/presse/news08/pm280917-1eil.mp3 Podcast on Univeristy Homepage]
In this podcast of the Ruperto-Carola University Professor Eils explains the Heidelberg project in the context of Synthetic Biology to the public.
[http://www.faz-archiv.de/ FAZ article]
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has printed a short report on the Heidelberg iGEM team. You can read the article titled "Krieg im Brutkasten der Biotechnik" in the todays issue or in archive of the FAZ Webpage (non-free).
