Table Of ContentNANO-PUBLICS
Communicating
Nanotechnology
Applications, Risks,
and Regulations
Pat J. Gehrke
Nano-Publics
Pat J. Gehrke
Nano-Publics
Communicating Nanotechnology Applications,
Risks, and Regulations
Pat J. Gehrke
University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-69610-2 ISBN 978-3-319-69611-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69611-9
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A
ckNowledgmeNts
I am grateful for the support of the National Science Foundation, which
provided the funding for this study.1 A number of colleagues contributed
to the maturation of this project. I am grateful to David Berube at North
Carolina State University for inviting me to develop and run the public
engagement events, as well as for his input on the earliest articulations of
the organic public engagement methodology. I am also indebted to the
work of two graduate research assistants who worked as coders on that
study: Matthew Boedy and Jonathan Maricle. Finally, none of this work
would have been possible without the support of my department, college,
and university. The University of South Carolina has been supportive of
this work, and I am especially thankful to the College of Arts and Sciences
for providing additional funding that brought this project through its final
months of development.
Note
1. National Science Foundation Grant: Nanotechnology Interdisciplinary
Research Team in Intuitive Toxicology, #06-595.
v
c
oNteNts
1 Organic Public Engagement with Nanotechnology:
Advantages and Challenges 1
2 Public Understanding of Nanotechnology:
How Publics Know 21
3 Nanotechnology Applications and Risks:
Valences and Ambiguities 39
4 Government Regulation of Nanotechnology:
Imperfectly Essential 51
5 Lessons for Science Communicators:
Assumptions and Assessment 65
Master Works Cited 87
Index 93
vii
l f
ist of igures
Fig. 2.1 Levels of public understanding 24
Fig. 2.2 Distribution of understanding by region 25
Fig. 2.3 Distribution of understanding by group type 25
Fig. 2.4 Distribution of understanding by education level 26
Fig. 2.5 Distribution of understanding by income level 26
ix
l t
ist of Ables
Table 1.1 Most commonly occurring reliable codes 16
Table 3.1 Positive and negative audience responses to applications 42
Table 3.2 Collective disposition by application 43
Table 3.3 Weighted factors influencing disposition 43
Table 4.1 Public disposition toward government 54
Table 4.2 Public disposition toward industry 56
xi
CHAPTER 1
Organic Public Engagement
with Nanotechnology: Advantages
and Challenges
Abstract Using recent advances in the study of human behavior to
consider how people understand and perceive nanotechnology provides
us with a richer and more actionable set of insights into public perceptions
of this exciting emerging technology. At the same time, using public per-
ceptions of nanotechnology to explore the potential of new methods of
studying human behavior provides us with a case study in the power of
these techniques. It demonstrates their capacity to produce insights that
are not only more valid and have a greater capacity to explain human
perception and action but also more useful to people who need to
communicate with publics about new technologies and set regulations for
those technologies.
Keywords Organic public engagement • Nanotechnology • Public
understanding of science • Behavioral economics • Public engagement
with science
This book is about two major technological advances: public perception of
new materials engineered at the molecular level with astounding properties
and the development of new techniques in the study of human behavior
that are revolutionizing how we research human behavior and attitudes.
The first of these goes by the broad term nanotechnology, while the second
goes by many names but has been popularized primarily under the mantle
© The Author(s) 2018 1
P.J. Gehrke, Nano-Publics,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69611-9_1
2 1 ORGANIC PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT WITH NANOTECHNOLOGY...
of behavioral economics. Each of these technological advances has reached
the general public in just the last 20 years, with their broad adoption
occurring only in the past decade. Each is on the cusp of revolutionizing
industries and fields in ways that will transform them for decades to come.
Each is controversial and carries its own risks along with its opportunities.
Using recent advances in the study of human behavior to consider how
people understand and perceive nanotechnology provides us with a richer
and more actionable set of insights into public perceptions of this exciting
new technology. At the same time, using public perceptions of nanotech-
nology to explore the potential of new methods of studying human behav-
ior provides us with a case study in the power of these techniques. It
demonstrates their capacity to produce insights that are not only more
valid and have a greater capacity to explain human perception and action
but also more useful to people who need to communicate with publics
about new technologies and set regulations for those technologies. This
book takes on both of these tasks, offering readers an example of how to
study public perception and communication of new technologies as well as
a set of robust actionable insights into public perceptions and communica-
tion of nanotechnology in particular.
Nanotechnology has been a serious field of scientific and technological
research for more than 30 years, but only in the past decade has it gained
much public attention. In short, nanotechnology refers to “the ability to
control and restructure the matter at the atomic and molecular levels in the
range of approximately 1 nm to 100 nm, and exploiting the distinct prop-
erties and phenomena at that scale” (Roco 2011, p. 428). Nanotechnology
derives its name from its size, measured in nanometers (nm), which are
10–9 meters. Conceptualizing something this tiny can be difficult, requir-
ing comparisons to the smallest things people see and encounter on a daily
basis. For example, a human hair is roughly 90,000 nm thick, and there are
over 25 million nanometers in an inch. When we try to think about some-
thing 100 nm in size, we are trying to imagine something much smaller
than most of us have ever seen, even through a microscope. Germs are
typically about 1000 nm, and red blood cells tend to be about 8000 nm in
diameter. So, if something must be between 1 nm and 100 nm to qualify
as a nanotechnology, it has to be no larger than one- tenth the size of a
germ and one-eightieth the size of a red blood cell.
As fantastic as it may sound to think that we could engineer tech-
nologies at such a tiny scale, most of us use technologies manufactured
at the nanoscale every day. Modern computers and smartphones include
