Introduction
Science is and always has been a social matter and therefore should be treated as one. In iGEM this is reflected in Human Practices and its essential part ethics and policies. Its purpose is identifying the impact of a scientific project on the society and the world we live in.
Therefore, it is important to consistently evaluate how a project is received by the general public and by various stakeholders. Their input, whether it is fear, advice or approval, needs to be included into the evaluation, the progress and the execution of each iGEM project.
The Human Practices team made an extensive effort to evaluate the impact of our project PHIRE BYRD on the society and the global community. For the evaluation, we relied on input from the general public, scientists, ethicists and government officials.
Timeline
We made extensive efforts to not only identify the potential impacts of our project PHIRE BYRD on society and the global community but also to assess how our project was received. We therefore relied on input from various stakeholders like the general public, scientists, ethicists and government officials.
After deciding on a project idea, we started to map out its potential areas of impact, positive and negative, as well as potentially relevant stakeholders. This is an absolute necessity in order to consider an actual implementation in the world.
We started to engage with the relevant stakeholders by scheduling and conducting interviews with multiple people from different professions and areas of expertise as well as by performing a survey for the general public. The aim was receiving input (feedback, advice, thoughts, …) on our project and to evaluate if and how to integrate it in our project design.
Over the course of the iGEM year, we had informative and fascinating talks about our project PHIRE BYRD, with:
- Dr. Johannes Fritsch, head of the Office of the Joint Committee on the Handling of Security-Relevant Research at the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina1
- a representative of the Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU)
- Dr. Michael Vockenhuber, head of Biosecurity at the Technical University of Darmstadt
- Dr. Swantje Straßheim of the Central Committee on Biological Safety (ZKBS2)
- Prof. Dr. Kathryn Nixdorff, expert for biosecurity, especially dual-use issues, and founding member of IANUS which stands for Interdisciplinary Working Group on Science, Technology and Safety3
- Prof. Dr. Alfred Nordmann, professor for philosophy and history of sciences at our university, expert in the field of technological philosophy
The meetings with these experts focused on:
- The safety aspects and measures that are necessary for our project
- The prevention of abuse of our phage-defense system (dual-use issue)
- The laws and regulations that referred to our project on a national as well as an international level
- The ethical justifiability of our project
- Our responsibility as young scientists working on an impactful project like this
After all interviews were conducted, we had to reflect the input we gathered in order to decide how we want to adapt our project in regards to their useful insights. We decided to integrate quite a few of their valuable ideas and suggestions into our project. If you want to know which suggestions, we included into our project design and what we learned from our experts, take a look at our Integrated Human Practices page.
Survey
Science communication is often neglected in science. Therefore, our team performed, among others, a survey to engage with the public and get their opinion on different topics, such as science communication itself as well as synthetic biology and GMOs.
Our survey was conducted in German. We’ve shared it by word-of-mouth advertising and via different platforms such as Instagram or email-newsletter. A total of 365 people finished our survey. Additionally, the survey was started 95 more times but not finished. The results below take only the answers of the fully completed survey into account. We further elaborate on this in the comments & learning section.
As shown in the figures below, we managed to reach a broad spectrum of people. Thus, the results should describe meaningful what the general public thinks regarding our questions.
Participants
The distribution of our participants is shown in the toggle below.
Participants
We almost reached an equal distribution in the category gender.
A majority of participants is in the age group 20 to 24. Nevertheless, people from all age groups were reached.
For the evaluation of the results, we divided the participants in three age groups of roughly the same sample size. For this, we chose to group participants younger than 25 together, as well as participants aged 25 to 49. The third group is made up of participants aged 50 years and older. This division skews the precision of our results but helps to maintain the expressiveness. We believe this is justified as it allows us to maintain comparability between groups in the area of size.
The majority of people stated that their place of residency is rather urban. In contrast to the urbanization rate of Germany, which was 77.5% in 2020 4 , this result is biased in favour of rural inhabitants.
It was important to us, that the results of our survey are not biased through affiliation with the surveyed field. Therefore, we went to great lengths to share our survey in a variety of ways to different groups of people. We wanted to prevent a large percentage of participants with a biotechnology background. This included newsletters, as well as promotion of our survey at our school visits for our biotech workshop. We asked the following question at the beginning of the survey to check whether our precautionary actions were successful:
This shows that the majority of participants indeed did not work in the field of biological sciences.
We also asked about the highest degree of education of our participants.
With 41%, the majority of our participants stated having a university degree. Another 37% of participants answered that they finished their A-levels. Unfortunately, this is not representative for the overall population of Germany in 2020. The ratio of university degrees in Germany was only 18.5%.5 This shows that we have reached more people with academic education.
The evaluations show that we mainly achieved an equal distribution of gender and place of residence. In addition, we succeeded in reaching people who do not work in a biological field.
Nevertheless, our survey is still biased. This can be seen in the age, since most of the participants have been between 20 and 24 years old (35-40%). Additionally, almost half of the participants had a university degree. This can be explained by our own academic background. We have spread the survey mainly through university or iGEM platforms. The majority of people we reach by that are about the same age as we are and have a similar level of education as we do. Still, the results of the survey give an interesting insight into the views on science communication and synthetic biology from at least a part of the general public.
Overall Results
The overall answers of all participants are summarised below.
Regarding the interest in science, 87% of the participants answered 3 or higher on a scale from 1 (no interest) to 5 (high interest).
Most of the participants are interested in natural sciences, even if they are not affiliated with a biological field (69%). This is not surprising, as the survey was mainly shared across university platforms or through our personal contacts. Also, people who are not interested in natural sciences would less likely be willing to participate in a “survey on genetic engineering, synthetic biology and science communication”. Thus, the distribution of interest in science is not representative for society. This is an important aspect for evaluation of the survey results. In fact, this has to be considered for all following results.
Science Communication
Science Communication
More than 80% of participants stated that science communication is important or even very important to them. At the same time, almost half of our participants said that the exchange between science and society is currently rather bad or bad. Less than 15% view the current state of science communication as rather good or good. The results regarding science communication of science related to GMOs was even worse. Here, more than 70% of participants stated that the communication is bad or rather bad. This has encouraged us to focus strongly on science communication in our project. We have to involve the population and relevant stakeholders from the very beginning of every scientific project. Only this way we can close the gap between the scientific and the non-scientific community. We can see mistrust and ignorance in science right now when discussing topics related to COVID19 and vaccines publicly. Here, we can see clearly why science communication is so important. Fake news are a big problem as well. Spreading them is easier than ever in these days and ages. “Alternative” scientific facts are often the sources vaccination opponents refer to. The only way to counteract is to spread evidence-based scientific facts and making them easily accessible for everyone. The general public needs to be able to participate in science and have a voice to express their thoughts. In our survey we also gave the participants the option to write free-answer texts about their fears and their suggestions to genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Some of the many answers we got are shown in the comment section at the end of the evaluation.
Genetic Engineering
Genetic Engineering and Synthetic Biology
For the following two questions multiple answers could be chosen by the participants.
About two-thirds of the participants consider genetic engineering as interesting. Since most of them are interested in science, this result is not surprising. At the same time, 31% of participants consider genetic engineering to be alarming.
For us, however, this result is positive. It shows that at least among the participants, the interest in this topic greatly outweighs the fear.
We wanted to know more about the reason why still so many people view genetic engineering as something alarming. If we understand the motives, we can do science communication more specifically in direction of the public’s fears.
Therefore, participants had the opportunity to write a free text response regarding their fears of genetic engineering and synthetic biology. Some of those can be read below in the comments section.
We believe that a lot of these concerns could be alleviated by more educational work and an increased intercommunication between scientists and the population. With our Human Practices work, we did our best to contribute to this goal.
The majority of participants (71%) considers synthetic biology as a form of progress. We are very pleased with this result, as it shows openness towards synthetic biology in the population – at least in the group represented by our participants. This conveys a good basis for doing science communication. Nevertheless, only 5% of participants chose the answer “safe”. In addition, the participants also wished for more communication about risk management in the comment section.
That is why we wanted to focus on risk management. We have talked to various experts about safety in synthetic biology. Additionally, we strongly focussed on safety in our project itself! One of our implements is the designed kill-switch as a control mechanism. And our project itself has great potential to make biotechnological biofilm applications safer in future and could contribute to a higher “safe” association with the term synthetic biology.
Around 90% of participants agreed that it is morally acceptable to use genetic engineering for research or for medical applications. In contrast, only 58 % agree to use genetic engineering in the food industry.
Since genetic engineering in the food industry is less accepted by society in Germany, we believe that especially in this area more education and communication is needed. However, we did not focus on the food industry as a potential scope of application for our project.
Our Project
Our Project
We have also asked the participants questions specifically regarding our project. Asking about the dangers of phages a lot of people responded “no idea”. This shows us that further explanations are necessary before a well-founded exchange with the public is possible. This is also reflected in the participants’ comments. Despite short explanation texts, many of them wrote that it was difficult to answer the phage related questions because they lacked knowledge about the topic. This is an important finding for our project and for future phage projects. It shows that we had to put more emphasis on the communication about phages. Therefore, we decided to include phages in our education program. The best platform for this was our podcast “Genomenal”. We have produced several podcast episodes covering the topic of phages. Phages were also a topic in one of our recorded radio plays: “Phage Phips on adventure trip”. Through this we introduced the topic of phages and in general the exciting world of biology to kindergarten children. Starting science education with the youngest generation already, this offers the best chances of success to raise a generation with an affinity and understanding for science.
Correlations
Besides evaluating the overall results of our survey and capture the opinions of our participants, we also analysed possible correlations.
Urban vs. Rural
One possible hypothesis we looked at was whether there was a noticeable difference in the answers between people who stated that they live rather urban and people who stated that they live rather rural. For the following question, multiple answers could be chosen by the participants.
Comparing the answers to the questions shown here, as well as the results to the other questions, indicates no significant differences between rural and urban residences in Germany, regarding their opinion to genetic engineering and synthetic biology.
Age
For the following question, multiple answers could be chosen by the participants.
Evaluating the results regarding the question about associations with genetic engineering it can be seen that the amount of people who chose the answer “alarming” seems to increase with age. This suggests that older people are more sceptical about genetic engineering than younger people.
The significance of this difference was tested through a Chi-squared test. A p-value of 0.009 was calculated between the ratio of people under 25 who selected the word alarming and the proportion of people between 25 and 49 who selected alarming. This means that the difference is significant. The difference between the participants under 25 years and the participants from the category of 50 years and older is also significant, with a p-value < 0.001. The difference between the 25- to 49-year-olds and the participants 50 years and older is not big enough or the sample group too small to be of significance difference. Still, the trend can be seen clearly.
This is also reflected in the next questions regarding GMOs and food label.
While 40% of the participants younger than 25 years view the release of GMOs as morally acceptable, only 20% of the participants 50 years and older agree with that.
A Chi-squared test for this difference results in a p-value of 0.001. The result is therefore significant. The difference in the ratio of participants stating that it is not morally acceptable to release GMOs is even bigger among the individual age groups.
An even stronger discrepancy can be seen in the opinion on food labels. While only 30 % of participants younger than 25 years are influenced by “free of genetic engineering” labels, more than 70 % of participants older than 49 years stated that their purchases are influenced by such labels. Tested through a Chi-squared test, this result was significant with a p-value of < 0.001.
While a difference in the answers between the different age groups can also be seen in the question whether it is morally acceptable to use genetic engineering in the food industry, there is no noticeable discrepancy in the answers regarding medical applications. The results regarding research purposes appear similarly. This again shows us, that the population in Germany is more open towards genetic engineering for medical and research purposes than for applications in the food industry. Nevertheless, the younger generations seem to be more acceptable of genetic engineering in the food industry. This may mean that genetic engineering could find more usage in the food industry in future as the public becomes increasingly more open to it.
Bioscience vs. No Bioscience Background
The ratio of participants working in in the field of biological sciences or not is 20% to 80%. However, the number of participants should still allow a comprehensive result. For the following question, multiple answers could be chosen by the participants.
This diagram shows that more people that do not work in the field of biological sciences, view genetic engineering as alarming and threatening than people who work in one of those fields. A p-value of < 0.001 was calculated for the proportion of people working in the field of biosciences that selected the word alarming and the proportion of people not working in that field who selected alarming. This means that the divergence is significant. This suggests that through profound knowledge, understanding of genetic engineering and more involvement people could be less concerned about this field.
Also, the opinion about the release of GMOs shows a disparity in the answers between the two groups. While 45 % of people working in the field of biosciences agree that it is morally acceptable, only 29 % of people not working in the field of biosciences agree with that. Testing this difference with a Chi-squared test results in a p-value of 0.014 which is < 0.05, therefore showing the result is significant.
Again, the results concerning genetic engineering for research purposes and medical applications are equally high in both groups. A difference can be observed regarding the food industry. This suggests again, providing more explanations on the topic could increase a wider acceptance of it.
Comments and Learnings
Comments and Learnings
A majority of comments addressed the questions regarding phages. This is consistent with the results on these questions where many people stated they had “no idea”. Deeper explanations are necessary in order to enable intercommunication with the public about our project. This was important to realize for us. When you are mainly in a science and academic bubble, it’s easy to forget what people from other fields notice from natural sciences. Therefore, it is good to get reminded of that. As a result, we worked hard to make our project more understandable for the public. More information about how we achieved this can be viewed on our Human Practices and Education page.
Another thing we noticed during the evaluation of our survey is that 95 people started the survey and did not finish it. 14 % of people who quit the survey stopped during the first question that contained a definition in the title. This suggests that some people found the survey too demanding or boring. In future, we could design a simpler survey and thus reach more people to achieve a lower dropout rate. The few answers of the 95 people who did not complete the whole survey are not included in the results shown above.
Overall, we are happy with the participation in our survey and the results we gathered. We got confirmed in our goal to focus on science education and communication and let the general public be part of our project and actively shape it.
In addition, we learned a few things that we will keep in mind the next time we conduct a public survey. We will work even harder to make sure we reach a more diverse group of participants by searching for additional ways to promote our survey. We will think about designing a simpler survey or including more features, e.g., the option to skip questions. We are very happy that we gave the participants the option to send us free text answers and will include this in our next survey as well. We were surprized with the number of people that chose to write comments. Some of the comments that addressed frequently mentioned topics as well as some comments we personally found very enlightening are shown below. We have tried to address these in our project.
References
- 1. Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina e. V. Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaft. [accessed 2021 Oct 15]. https://www.leopoldina.org/leopoldina-home/
- 2. ZKBS. Zentrale Kommission für die biologische Sicherheit. [accessed 2021 Oct 15]. https://www.zkbs-online.de/ZKBS/DE/Home/home_node
- 3. IANUS. FiF – Forum interdisziplinäre Forschung der TU Darmstadt. [accessed 2021 Oct 15]. https://www.fif.tu-darmstadt.de/themen_fif/ianus/index.de.jsp
- 4. Rudnicka J. Grad der Urbanisierung in Deutschland bis 2020. . Statistika. 2021 Jul 5 [accessed 2021 Oct 5]. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/662560/umfrage/urbanisierung-in-deutschland/#professional
- 5. Statistisches Bundesamt. Bildungsstand. Bevölkerung im Alter von 15 Jahren und mehr nach allgemeinen und beruflichen Bildungsabschlüssen nach Jahren. Statistisches Bundesamt. 2020 Nov 25 [accessed 2021 Oct 5]. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bildung-Forschung-Kultur/Bildungsstand/Tabellen/bildungsabschluss