Some public concerns are extremely valid--and some are not. Following are some quotations that we found helpful in framing our studies of the influence of biotechnology on society--and the importance of public perceptions on influencing the future scientific conduct of biotechnology.
The "framing" of news stories on biotechnology...therefore has considerable potential for structuring the terms--and therefore the outcome--of public debate on the wisdom and worth of further biotechnological development.[1]
News coverage constructs our reality of developments in science just as it does our reality of political events or social trends.[2]
While scientific testimony played an important role in each decision-making process [in science controversies], these debates were ultimately resolved in the public arena, in the courts, through congressional action, or by a decision of a public-agency head.[3]
Ironically, despite the efforts on the part of the Asilomar scientists to protect these values [self-determination, freedom of inquiry, and peer review], the judgements on the outcome of that meeting would eventually be issued by nonscientists.[4]
Speaking in London last year [1990] at a conference organised by the Financial Times, a vice-president of Sandoz, Hans-Peter Sigg, warned that "widespread public hostility" towards biotechnology threatened to push Europe's pharmaceutical industry far behind those of Japan and the U.S....The biotechnology and other industries would be well advised to take much more seriously their responsibilities towards public understanding and debate.[5]
Dismissing as myth the idea that risk communication problems arise solely from lack of understanding (people may understand particular hazards but then choose to ignore them), [former FDA Commissioner Frank Young] nevertheless emphasized the importance of public opinion and an understanding of the ways in which it is formed....There was, he pointed out, a paradox in trying to argue at one and the same time that genetic engineering was novel, different, and exciting, and that it carried no new risks.[6]
Scientists often dismiss as oversimplified and distorted the way their work is appropriated. But the relationship between scientific and public culture is far more complex. As historian Robert Young put it, it is often "impossible to distinguish hard science from its economic and political context and from the generalizations which serve both as motives for the research and which are fed back into social and political debate."[7]
Scientific fields are influenced by institutional agendas and defined to reflect the priorities and assumptions of given societies at particular times.[8]
Sometimes concerns have less to do with the implications of science and technology than with the power relationships associated with them. Protests may be less against specific technological decisions than against the declining capacity of citizens to shape policies that affect their interests; less against science than against the use of scientific rhetoric to mask political or moral choices.[9]
Control over public definitions of what is to count as science is still anxiously clung to...as if there is only one natural version; yet scientists routinely negotiate definitions of "good science" among themselves, including that for public consumption. The innumerable attempts by ordinary publics in effect to negotiate what counts as legitimate public knowledge are frequently defined by those anxious elites as "antiscience."[10]
...the culture of control and standardization that characterizes scientific knowledge and that engenders ambivalent responses from those who encounter it in public. By constructing the public as ignorant, when that public may in its own idiom be expressing legitimate concern or dissent, scientific institutions inadvertently encourage yet more public ambivalence or alienation.[11]
Hence scientists patronizingly describe public reactions as "subjective" irrationality even though science may legitimately be rejected on grounds different than technical ignorance.[12]
The assertion that the key to public knowledge and acceptance of biotechnology is a matter of education is a false orientation.[13]
...communicating with the public is not simply a dissemination of research results but can be construed as an integral component of the research process. These findings clearly support the concept of a continuum of science communication, which is part of a more complex model that stresses contextual issues.[14]
It is clearly the responsibility of the scientist to keep the public informed. Ultimately it must be the public that makes decisions about the use of biotechnology and evaluates its social, legal and economic repercussions.[15]
The public's attitude towards biotechnology (at least for those who have thought about it) is probably one of apprehension. The only way to overcome this apprehension is by being open and not giving even the slightest appearance of trying to hide anything.[16]
The general public may be aware of biotechnology, but it does not understand its complex scientific issues.[17]
The public should be viewed as a "partner" and a level of trust needs to be created. Developing this style will be a major challenge for business leaders as well as university scientists and government regulators.[18]
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