There’s an interesting series of postings about public Understanding of science (it has a hideous acronym: PUS although I think some people are now using this one: PUoS). The main discussion starts with Richard Jones on his blog Soft Machines. Basically, he sums up the history of public understanding of nanotechnology in UK while providing some additional discussion and Andrew Maynard writes a ‘companion’ piece about the situation in the US. Both Jones and Maynard are scientists and advisors to various government and non governmental organizations. For the Jones material, go here and for the Maynard material, go here. I started with Dexter’s Johnson’s (IEE) comments about both postings here.

I am deeply jealous that there are programmes and interest in the UK and the US since there aren’t any here in Canada. We’ve done some of that kind of work in the area of biotechnology (much of it focused on genomics) but the nanotechnology end of things has been pretty much ignored, so far as I can tell. (Note: Quebec may be an exception. I have not scanned French language materials.) There is a National Institute of Nanotechnology but they don’t give out much information about their projects or their role for that matter.

it’s tempting to condemn the Canadian federal government and its policies regarding science generally and nanotechnology specifically but I dunno. Formal processes such as public meetings and forums and exercises are useful and can be quite meaningful but they will not obliterate the possibility of public misunderstandings, panic and hysteria, one of the unstated goals of public understanding or engagement in science.

The big panic that comes to mind is ‘frankenfoods’. That word which fused a pop culture icon emblematic of anxieties about science to concerns about food came to describe the whole of biotechnology. It’s a more complicated story as there a number of actors in the drama  but this is the short version and for a lot of people the word ‘frankenfood’ acted as a kind of shorthand. They didn’t have to understand the debates or any of the issues. We all do that sort of thing one way or another. There’s just too much information and too many ideas with not enough time and, sometimes, not enough interest.

‘Frankenfood’ was first mentioned in a letter to the New York Times. It was written by someone who has written many letter criticizing science and technology and there was no way to know that this time something different was about to happen.

I will continue tomorrow.