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Team:Heidelberg/Human Practice/Project Overview
From 2008.igem.org
Human Practice - Science Communication
Synthetic Biology is a very youg and dynamic scientific field. And as most modern scientific fields, synthetic biology offers many chances in solving actual problems. But on the other hand- and we want to communicate that quite clearly here- synthetic biology also comprises risks. The same risks that every modern science entains.
The hypophesis on which our human practices project is based is the follwing:
Science can only work successful and develop useful inventions if it is based on a high level of acceptance in the society.
From the past we learn, that modern bioscience is not always accepted and fully integrated in the common public interest. A good examle is the public view on green biotechnolgy in Germany and Europe. Many people in Germany are afraid of eating genetically manipulated food although they do not even know the difference between genetically manipulated food and normal food. Food is a product getting into direct contact to the commen public- and thus the human being, as a creature of habit, becomes sceptical towards this new product. So far- so good. But a real problem arises when the scepsis is in addition linked to unknowingness about the scientific backround of a certain, new product. The combination of unknowingness and scepsis is the sward of Damocles of any new, upcoming scientific field, such as green biotec once was, because this combination leads in many cases to fear and by that to non-acceptance by the society. And that is what the green biotechnology has to battle with every single day.
Synthetic biology is up to now to young and far away of undergoing the same problematic change of acceptance that genetic engineering and green biotec underwent in many european countries.
But:
There is the risk that the common public might once here of something like artificial cells or biological robots and become again sceptical towards the uprising star in the fields of lifesciences. And that could lead to unsubstantiated prejudices and by that to non-accepatance of the modern synthetic biology research area.
Of caurse that would lead to retarding in this scientific field and possible to the non-development of many useful inventions.-
The aim of our project was now to analyze this hypothises and to give proposals and possible solutions on how to prevent an upcoming scepticism and unknowingness in the common public.
Thus we worked on three different levels:
The Essay
At first we wrote an to developed a concept on how we wanted to enable a good, non-frightening, but honest and informing way of science communication. You can find the Essay here
Surveys
Second we made a servey to determine the oppinion of scienctists and non-scientists on science communication and synthetic biology- so that we would know where the weaknesses in science communication are. For that we surveyed about 100 people with different intelectual and cultural backround in the heidelberg pedestrian street and about 80 scientist (PhD students, post docs and professors) of the BioQuant and the German Cancer Research Center. That gave us the starting point of our practical work. You can find the evaluation of the common public survey here and the evaltuation of the survey under scientists here.
Practiacal part- Information, Honesty and close Contact to the common public
Third, and that was the most important part of the project, we wanted to practicise a way of scientific communication based on our antecedent research and theoretical work, which would at the end lead to a close contact and a close commutation between our scientific work on the iGEM project and the common public.
