Survey on People's Attitude towards Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biology is a controversial topic in public opinion. To analyze people's attitude to this topic and whether these changed within the last years, we decided to take a survey. As a starting point, 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 research 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).

People's perception of scientific terms

The persons surveyed perceived synthetic biology as an abstract research area with little proximity to everyday life. Even if they just have little interest and knowledge about a specific topic, 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 potential risk and assumed benefit.

Figure 1: Percent of surveyed people that feel (un-)comfortable in response to the indicated terms.

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 reaction towards expressions like synthetic biology or genetic engineering is adversely (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.

Figure 2: People's associations with certain applications of Synthetic Biology.

The interest in synthetic biology in German society is in general relatively small and their attitude towards it restrained. But if synthetic biology 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.

Setup of our survey

Figure 3: Questions we asked during our survey.

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 attitude of people towards our project 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 market place of Freiburg. 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).

Influence of age on the response

The reactions to our project were overall positive (figure 4 to 9). The majority of people of both groups 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 5). For the synthetic-explanation sample, insecurity about out project is more equally distributed across the age groups, whereas the youngest group from 8 to 28 years old represents the largest share with 29%.

Figure 4: Percentage of people assessing research on the DiaCHIP on different scales

Figure 5: Percentage of people divided by age group assessing research on the DiaCHIP on different scales

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 consider the usage 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 noticeable that the shift is caused by the young and middle aged (figure 9).

Figure 6: Percentage of people that would recommend/use the DiaCHIP if they were a medical doctor

Figure 7: Percentage of people divided by age group that would recommend/use the DiaCHIP if they were a medical doctor

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 was similar in both the synthetic and non-synthetic explanation. However, the majority would let themselves be tested with the DiaCHIP (figures 8 and 9).

Figure 8: Percentage of people that would want to be tested with the DiaCHIP if they were sick

Figure 9: Percentage of people divided by age group that would want to be tested with the DiaCHIP if they were sick

Summarizing our survey we can conclude that people´s interest and their positive attitude towards synthetic research topics increases if and when the research has a more specific application. Fundamental research with a medical or economical background are mostly accepted accepted within our society. 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.