Team:Paris Bettencourt/Human Practice/Debate

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Audience's feedback

"Great debate today. Congratulations to all the participants and to Claire [and the rest of the Paris Bettecourt 2012 iGEM team] for organizing everything. What I love about events like this is seeing the world in a new light - I was impressed by the research concerning cleaning up plastics in the ocean, 3 degrees of mutations and research concerning XNA. We are on the edge of a whole new world of thought-provoking research. I particularly liked the question, "Who will decide if this is right or wrong?" Scientists? Politicians? Public intellectuals? (for which France has the advantage!) Very powerful stuff. You guys have your fingers on the pulse of the future. The question is, who's listening? My country is still debating gun control and abortion while other countries are taking on huge topics such as applications of synthetic life forms. I have 2 words to sum up the debate: paradigm shift." (Mister Alan Damon, a high school biology and physics teacher at the Ecole Active Bilingue Jeannine Manuel and member of the public during the debate)

"It was very interesting and I enjoyed the informal part, once the jury left, even more that the official one because people seem to speak more honestly, directly and with less posturing and acting. Overall, the level of debate, in terms of scientific facts, arguments, was less that what one could have achieved by putting together some "real" scientist, iGEM team members, but this naiveté is also exactly what made it interesting and unique. Such public issues will often be debated by non-experts, and if and when they make it to the legislature, they will be debated by politicians, and they are certainly not experts. With that in mind, seeing how non-experts could argue different aspects of genetically modified bacteria was very instructive and useful. Thank you again for putting it together, it was a pleasure to be there." (Dule Misevic, a post doc at Francois Taddei's lab)

2012 UCL iGEM team's feedback

"Being on the judging panel for the "Genetically Modified Organisms FDA Style Debate" was an exciting and novel experience to me - I have never really participated in a structured debate. I think this was a very interesting concept to let experienced debaters but non-scientists / non-iGEMers debate the merits of synthetic biology. This perhaps reflects more closely the discourse that happens on a policy and society level. I found this a bit frustrating, as both sides didn't really progress the arguments much beyond the cliché. Maybe I was expecting too much, coming from a synthetic biology background and recently dealing a lot with the ethical, legal and social issues. But the more I reflect on the experience and on having had the privilege of taking part in the judging panel, I realize that in a public debate and public decision, style and presentation can often matter more than substance or correctness of arguments. I find this worrying, but a very valuable lesson that the debate showed. Following up from the debate, I wonder how we can learn from this, how we can make sure we can judge these issues dispassionately and rationally in society and policy." (Philipp Boeing, Member of the 2012 UCL iGEM team)

2012 Grenoble iGEM team's feedback

"First we would like to point out the fact that the debate was really well managed from the start to the end. Organizing such type of event is not accessible to any newcomer.

The debate was led by fluent English speakers which offered a real cache. They also showed a true investment in the debate making it entertaining and lively. In spite of their background (medicine, law, and engineer studies) they showed a real knowledge in the different fields they approached. The members of the jury had backgrounds from different horizons; making the judging procedure fair and opened to any discussions.

Although, the argumentation deployed by the speakers seemed a bit too simple for a warned public; the debate makes totally sense as part of Paris Bettencourt’s human practice project. The content was really accessible even for a callow public which is something we very much appreciated and which is quite difficult to achieve in the case of scientific debates around topics like synthetic biology.

The questions/remarks session, offered to the floor the opportunity to develop the speakers’ argumentation. Moreover, people working in the field of biology gave more in depth information regarding the topic.

Finally, I would like to thank the Paris Bettencourt team for inviting us to this wonderful debate and afternoon in Paris."

(Grégory Hansen, on behalf of the 2012 Grenoble iGEM team)

Judges' feedback

"We found that the debate was interesting and educating, but we were suprised by the way in which the debator treated the subject. We found that the proposition side made a better case. We were suprised to not hear more arguments to back up their case but what is important is that they succeded to entertain the floor and prove that even though they didn't know that much about the subject they were the more convincing ones. The opposition did a good case as well, but they lacked all the examples they could have brought to the case to explain why the whole thing is so uncertain, why we don't know what the consequences of what modified bacteria would bring to our world. We were happy with both team's work and really enjoyed the debate. Thank you for this opportunity to witness such a great debate and organization" (Dessislava Tocheva, from the law school "Paris II - Assas" AND coordinator of the Franco-British Comparative Project, and one of this debate's adjudicator)

Debators's feedback

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Our feedback

"I really enjoyed this debate. I think the level of biology was actually quite high, I didn't expect it to be that high. I though it was going to be just some random exchange of arguments, but actually they did a great job preparing the debate. Therefore I was surprised by how high the level of debating was. I don't know if my point of view changed on the issue of releasing genetically modified organisms in the environment, but I think both teams brought some very interesting arguments and I guess one of the messages I take from this is that if we bring now this kind of debate to the parliament, people are probably not prepared enough to have a very rational debate on that. People are not ready for that question yet. I think one of the jobs we have to do is to keep educating people about synthetic biology, about dangers that it might create, because we don't know yet if it is dangerous or not, so people can make their own opinion about that and choose very carefully what they want for our society in the future" (Ernest Mordret, iGEM 2012 Paris Bettencourt team)

Our team was very delighted by the debate. Most of the debaters knew nothing about synthetic biology and putting genetically modified bacteria in the wild, and yet, during one week, they researched information on the internet, called aquaintances and friends that might know more to discuss with them. They learned a lot, and they enabled the public to learn a lot by listening. Their speaking skills were excellent, making the debate very fun to follow. They used a lot of pictures to try and come back to thinks they knew (for e.g: nuclear energy, women), which made the debate easy to follow for none experts on the subject. We got a majority of positive feedback. The few negative comments were got concerned the deepth and number of the arguments. Experienced debators are used to hear A LOT of arguments in each debate, with mechanims explained in depth. This was not the case in this debate, but we never had expected such a thing. The subject was really too difficult for that. And even syntehtic biologists like us would not be able to talk about all these issues in depts, because they are still many things we don't understand or just don't know yet.

The public was very diverse: composed of hight school students, Licence, Master, PhD students from all backgrounds, lawyers, biologists and high school teachers. We also had 4 special guests: 2 students from the iGEM 2012 UCL team and 2 students from the iGEM 2012 Grenoble team. We were very please that the public was so numerous (a little more then 70 people!). We were also very happy with the debate that happend with the public. It was very rich, and we think that more exchanges between scientists and none scientists such as this one should happen.

Conclusion

The debate was a success as it met all the objectives we had set.

1. To raise awarness about synthetic biology in the population.

   This was achieved through: the facebook event page (We invited as much people as possible from our fb contact. Even if people did not come to the debate, most probably read the desciption, and so they read a bit about syntehtic biology); the debators finding out about synthgetic biology and releasing genetically modified bacteria in the wild, all the people they might have contacted, all the friends they invited to the debate and talked to about the debate, their facebook friends(I can tell most of the advertized this debate on their facebook profile), the public that attended the debate and the people they might discuss the debate with afterwards.

2. That students who previously knew nothing about synthetc biology have a passionate debate on releasing genetically modified bacteria in the wild.

   This is exactly what happend. The video and feedbacks can testify.

3. To see how students who previously knew nothing about synthetc biology react to such a motion: where they will get the information, what type of arguments they will come up with, will they consider things from a different angle that we do?

   They learned a lot in just a week. They got their information through the internet and friends (for e.g, the first thing Ivan Palenick did was to call his friend that does a PhD in biotechnologies).

4. To get the audience's feedback on the debate and views on the question.

   The debate with the audience waw very rich, as it can be seen from the video.

5. To bring together scientists and non scientists to discuss releasing gentically modified bacteria in the wild.

   The public was made up of scientists and none scientists. At th end, the debate was opend to the floor. They all discussed together and with debators.

6. That the debate be accessible to everyone

   the speaking skills of the debators were excellent, and they used many images, which made the debate understandable to all (even people that came in knowing nothing about the subject).

We would like to add that everyone had a really great time.