18.2 Public Perception of the ascent Field of Synthetic Biology 377Although SB is still a rather young field, a number of projects and social
science research groups have carried out studies on public perception in Europe
and the United States. These investigations have been conducted with different
methods, ranging from phone surveys and focus group studies to public
dialogues, while the sample sizes of these studies were also varied. It is worth to
point out that it is difficult to do quantitative comparisons on these data.
What we intend to do here is thus merely a summary of these findings on public
perception on SB.
18.2.1 Perception of Synthetic Biology in the United States
From year 2008 to 2010, three consecutive surveys were conducted by the Hart
Research Associates; and another one was in 2013 [18]. These surveys provided
findings on what were the public perceptions on SB.
Awareness of the technology: The public awareness of SB has increase steadily.
Those who heard a lot or some of the technology increased from a bit <1 in 10
earlier to nearly 1 in 4 now (9% in year 2008, 22% in year 2009, 26% in year
2010, and 23% in year 2013). This trend of awareness of the technology might
reflect the development in the research field. The promise of SB in harnessing
biomass to useful products [6, 19–21] and the creation of the first synthetic
cell made it to the headlines of mainstream media [22]. The public exposure to
newspaper articles or other media types increased especially in 2010, the year
of the Venter Institute publication of the so-called synthetic cell. While in the
recent years, as no “thrilling” media news came out of SB, the result was a
slightly less marked public awareness.
Imaging the technology: Result from the survey of year 2013 showed that nearly
one third (31%) of the public surveyed associated the science with something
unnatural, man-made, and artificial. 15% linked the science to generate new
life via genetic manipulation. The rest was on possible applications in medical
science (10% on prosthetics and 6% for new medicine), agriculture (6%), and
basic science (5%). The linkage between SB and something man-made and
artificial might be resulted from the term “synthetic,” which is traditionally
linked to man-made chemicals. It might also be the result from the channel
the public learned about the technology, for example, from the media coverage
on synthetic cells.
Risk and benefits of the technology: Based on the level of awareness of the tech-
nology, those who heard nothing showed higher uncertainty in judging the
risk–benefit issue (49% vs 23% of those who heard a little and 18% of those
who heard a lot or some). From those who heard about the technology, a lot,
some or a little, a majority considered the risks and benefits of equal impor-
tance (37% and 40%, respectively). For those who heard a lot or some, the posi-
tive thinking (28% of net benefit overweight) was more than the negative
thinking (17% of net risk overweight). After providing information about SB,
the uncertainty reduced (from 27% down to 5%) from the people in the
informed group, yet the negative thinking increased from 15% before informed
to 33% post informed. It suggested that the public formed their judgment on a