University of Minnesota Scientific Outreach

There has not been an extensive investigation of public knowledge and acceptance of synthetic biology (Pauwels, 2009); however, we found the results of the few investigations into these parameters to be interesting. Specifically, we were intrigued to learn that results suggest the “familiarity hypothesis” may not hold for synthetic biology – that is, people do not become more receptive of the technology upon having a greater understanding of it. We wanted to examine this relationship and its outcomes.

We wanted to determine if there exists a correlation between public knowledge of synthetic biology and the public’s acceptance of synthetic biology; we specifically expected a positive correlation between these two measures. We also wanted to investigate if a correlation exists between these parameters and educational level.

To achieve this, we designed and distributed surveys to 143 respondents at the MN state fair. To assess the public’s knowledge of synthetic biology, each respondent answered a question asking to give their best guess as to the definition of synthetic biology from a bank of possible choices. Using a binary scoring system, correct answers received a “1”, while incorrect responses were given a “0”. Likewise, people who indicated an acceptance of synthetic biology in survey questions were given a score of “1”.

Surprisingly, we found no correlation between correct knowledge and reception of synthetic biology (0.0294).

We also evaluated these two measures with respect to educational level. Unsurprisingly, we found that educational level correlates with an understanding of synthetic biology. However, an acceptance of synthetic biology did not correlate with educational level.

Our results support the idea that a greater knowledge of synthetic biology does not necessarily correlate with increased acceptance. This raises the question of what can be done to increase acceptance of synthetic biology. Additionally, our survey was given to two groups of students within the biological sciences program at the University of Minnesota, one upper level and one lower level. In these samples, we found that increased education levels correlated with both increased acceptance and knowledge. What makes these results interesting is that they seem to contradict the results of the Hart Survey (Hart Research Associates, 2008) which suggested that opinion of synthetic biology does not follow the familiarity hypothesis. Our results suggest that to achieve findings in line with the familiarity hypothesis, a deep education in biological sciences and synthetic biology is required.

In the future, it would be interesting to see if people’s perceptions of synthetic biology are more accepting if they are able to openly discuss synthetic biology with researchers. Possibly discussion with iGEMers about their projects could be enough to increase public acceptance of synthetic biology.