Survey on people's attitude towards synthetic biology

To analyze the attitude people have towards synthetic biology and how it develoved over time, we decided to take a survey. For comparison we consulted a study conducted by the German National Academy of Sciences - Leopoldina in 2013 (Leopoldina - "Die Synthetische Biologie in der öffentlichen Meinungsbildung"). In their study they addressed the state of knowledge and attitude of german society towards synthetic biology. They carried out 23 in-depth interviews with scientists of different resarch areas, a quantitative survey among 106 scientists and 103 journalists and among a representative cross-section of the part of German population 16 years and older (2,305 people).

Those surveyed percieve synthetic biology as an abstract research area with little proximity to everyday life. Even if there is only little interest and knowledge about a specific topic present, people still have an opinion about it. Their judgement is then formed significantly by spontaneous reactions regardless of their state of knowledge and based on a trade of between potential risk and assumed benefit.

Indeed the majority of German society reacts favorable towards terms like research, science, cutting-edge technology or innovation. But even though they admit straightforward to know nothing or only little about it, their spontaneous emotional recation towards expressions like synthetic biology or genetic engineering is adversively (figure 1). This indicates that already the denomination of a research field can put up barriers that can complicate communication between scientists and the society.

The interest in synthetic biology in German society is in general rather small and their attitude towards it rather restrained. But if synthetic research topics have a more specific application both people's interest and their positive attitude towards it increases. Research with a medical or economical background is accepted the most in society (figure 2). An explanation could be, that for this research the assumed benefit outweighs potential risks because it holds potential to solve important real life problems.

That's where our study comes into play. Since our iGEM project combines synthetic biology and a medical application, we wanted to know whether there is a difference in the spontaneous reaction of people when they do or don't know that we have a synthetic biological approach. Compared to the Leopoldina-study our study was a bit smaller: we surveyed 37 people between 8 and 78 years we met on the Freiburg market place. We first gave them an explanation about our project and then asked them some questions (figure 3). In the explanation we either mentioned words like „artificially produced“ or „genetically modified“ (synthetic explanation) or totally avoided to refer to the synthetic biology behind our project (non-synthetic explanation).

The reactions to our project were in total positive (figure 4 to 10). The majoritiy of people think of the DiaCHIP as a reasonable scientific project (95% and 84%). Only a little percentage (17% and 5%) is not sure about it and none of the surveyed refuses the idea of our project(figure 4). If the two samples are divided up by age group, one can see that for the non-synthetic-explanation group only the middle aged people are not sure (20%, figure 8). For the synthetic-explanation sample being unsure is more equally distibuted across the age groups, whereas the youngest group from 8 to 28 years old repesents with 29% the largest share.

While with the first question we intended to analyze the general impression people have of our research, we asked the second question to see whether they would really make use of a DiaCHIP, if they were in an appropriate position. Here people's perception shifts for both samples more to the maybe side (figure 5). The effect is larger for the sample with the synthetic explanation. Here the maybe-fraction increased by 22 percent. When the samples are split by age group it is noticable that the shift is caused by the young and middle aged (figure 9).
With the third question we tried to investigate how people rate the DiaCHIP if they are personally involved and hypothetically have to trust its results. The answers to this question resemble each other between the synthetic and non-synthetic explanation. However the majority would get themselves tested with the DiaCHIP.(figure 6).

Summarizing our survey we can conclude that people´s interest and their positive attidude towards synthetic research topics increases if and when the research has a more specific application. Fundamental research with a medical or economical background are accepted in society the most. With our survey we observed that people develop a very positive attitude towards synthetic biology with a specific medical application. The inquiry shows that our DiaCHIP will be a helpful and useful diagnostic device accepted by german society.