Cultural Cognition of Synthetic Biology Risks

合成生物学是一项新兴技术，它允许科学家设计与自然界中任何生物都不同的生物体。人们希望，这种生物可能会有无数有益的用途，包括治疗疾病、消除环境污染物和生产新能源。与此同时，科学家们认识到，经过改造的生命形式可能对环境和人类健康构成风险。这些危害究竟是什么，以及如何控制它们，不可能完全独立于完善合成生物学发展所必需的研究而完全确定。公众会抵制这样一种风险和利益仍然存在这种程度不确定性的科学的出现吗？公众的反应又会如何影响呢？在决定地球上生命形态的过程中，人类的力量将取代自然的微妙过程，这一前景在道德和情感上有何反应？研究人员和风险传播者应该做些什么，以确保这些反应不会妨碍现有的最佳科学为公众审议提供信息？本项目将利用对风险的文化认知来帮助回答这些问题。的吗?风险的文化认知？指个体倾向于将他们对假定的危险活动的事实性信念与他们对这些活动的文化评价相匹配。过去的研究已经确立了文化认知在不同环境风险的公众冲突中的作用。其中一些争议涉及成熟的技术，如核能；另一些则涉及相对较新的领域，比如纳米技术。目前的项目将使用文化认知来识别合成生物学风险的潜在冲突来源，以及减轻冲突的技术。此外，该项目将如何使合成生物学的另一个重要的风险感知机制的焦点？是计算能力，还是个人掌握定量信息的能力？与文化认知相互作用。通过这种方式，该项目将扩展风险感知动态的科学知识，同时促进社会发展。美国有兴趣预测公众对一项特别重要的新技术的反应。

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.