Cultural Cognition of Synthetic Biology Risks

合成生物学是一项新兴技术，它允许科学家设计出与自然界中发现的任何生物体都不同的生物。人们希望，这种生物可能会被用于无数有益的用途，包括治疗疾病、消除环境污染物和生产新的能源。与此同时，科学家们认识到，基因改造的生命形式可能会对环境和人类健康构成风险。如果没有完善合成生物学发展所必需的研究，就不能完全确定这些危险到底是什么，以及如何控制它们。如果一门科学的风险和收益仍然伴随着这种程度的不确定性，公众会抵制这种科学的出现吗？公众的这种反应可能会受到怎样的影响？S对决定地球上生命形态的人类力量取代自然微妙过程的前景做出了道德和情感上的反应？研究人员和风险传播者应该做些什么，以确保这样的反应不会阻止最好的可用科学为公众讨论提供信息？这个项目将使用对风险的文化认知来帮助回答这些问题。对风险的文化认知？指的是个人倾向于将他们对假定危险的活动的事实信念与他们对这些活动的文化评价相适应。过去的研究已经确定了文化认知在各种环境风险引发的公共冲突中的作用。其中一些争端涉及核能等成熟的技术，另一些则涉及相对较新的技术，如纳米技术。目前的项目将使用文化认知来确定合成生物风险的潜在冲突来源，以及缓解这些冲突的技术。此外，该项目将使合成生物学成为另一种重要的风险感知机制--计算能力，即拥有定量信息的个人的能力--如何与文化认知相互作用的焦点。通过这种方式，该项目将扩展对风险感知动力学的科学知识，同时促进社会-S对预测公众对一项极其重要的新技术的反应的兴趣。

Synthetic biology is an emerging technology that permits scientists to design living organisms unlike any found in nature. Such organisms, it is hoped, might be put to myriad beneficial uses, including the treatment of disease, the elimination of environmental pollutants, and the production of new sources of energy. At the same time, scientists recognize that engineered life forms could pose risks to the environment and to human health. Exactly what those hazards are, and how they might be contained, cannot be fully determined independently of the very research necessary to perfect development of synthetic biology. Will the public resist the advent of a science the risks and benefits of which remain attended by this degree of uncertainty? And how might that reaction be influenced by the public?s moral and emotional responses to the prospect of substituting human agency for the subtle processes of nature in determining what shapes life takes on our planet? What should researchers and risk communicators do to assure that such reactions do not prevent the best available science from informing public deliberations?This project will use the cultural cognition of risk to help answer these questions. The ?cultural cognition of risk? refers to the tendency of individuals to fit their factual beliefs about putatively dangerous activities to their cultural evaluations of those activities. Past research has established the role of cultural cognition in public conflicts over diverse environmental risks. Some of these disputes relate to well established technologies, such as nuclear power; others relate to relatively novel ones, such as nanotechnology. The current project will use cultural cognition to identify potential sources of conflict over synthetic biology risks, and techniques for mitigating them. In addition, the project will make synthetic biology the focus of how another important mechanism of risk perception?numeracy, or the facility of individuals with quantitative information?interacts with cultural cognition. In this way, the project will extend scientific knowledge of the dynamics of risk perception generally at the same time that it promotes society?s interest in anticipating public reactions to one, singularly important new technology.