We participated to a science fair organized by the biocluster Genopole on October the 13th. This event called “La Fête de la Science” is lead in a shopping center so that people can and get in touch with today’s scientific practices. It was the occasion for the team to see the difficulty of such exercise. We mostly discussed about the metamorphosis of tadpoles into frogs and questions concerning the theory of evolution. More fundamental and complex work such as our synthetic orthogonal hormonal system only interested people already in close contact with biology. Such events are getting quite common and important in our societies, and nearly every team in iGEM do public outreach. Many believe that if science gets closer to society numerous controversies will be avoided. It often stated that the public doesn’t accept GMOs, nanotechnologies or nuclear energy because of some irrationality or some lack of knowledge. Thus many social apparatus are created, such as public understanding of science, public acceptability or consensus building forum, in order to help solving those issues.

Our experience triggered some questioning among the team… it is not obvious at all that coming to the public in order to explain what is science should be meant to make them accept controversial technologies. Furthermore stating that to know what a GMO is imply that we accept this technology might quite hasty. In 2001 Claire Marris published a study in EMBO reports entitled “Public views on GMOs: deconstructing the myths”.