6.0 Perceptions of Science

Groups commenced with a discussion about the role of science and technology in participants’ lives at a daily level. This served to engage participants in the process of forming opinions about science while at the same time revealing where human embryo research sat within the participants’ general awareness.

Top-of-mind associations with science and technology that were felt to affect people on a daily basis include:

• The Internet.
• Computers.
• Cell phones.
• Civil engineering.
• Medicine.
• Transport.

When probed deeper about science and technology that had any particular moral attachments – good or bad – participants often found it difficult to identify any. Over the course of the study however, two forms of science that did spontaneously emerge as being potentially threatening were consumer media and biological sciences.

Biological Science

Within biological science, genetic research and cloning were mentioned as being at least potentially dangerous, on account of the perception that genetic research has unknown (but widely suspected) capacities to contaminate the human food chain.

When cloning was mentioned as a science with moral issues it inevitably gained a strong chorus of support. Cloning was widely regarded as an ultimate example of the worst possible outcome for science, although this association is also based on an assumption that cloning is all about the re-creation of existing adults.

A typical example of the fear of cloning was:

‘People could be cloning Hitler!’
Asian woman, 25 – 35

There is little doubt that the general public has an over-simplified understanding of cloning, informed in equal part by sensationalised news media stories and science fiction narratives.

The fearful public understanding of cloning is – in all probability – more about the potential hijacking of the research than the actual scientific process at a cellular level. When participants were asked what they knew about cloning – only one or two people across the entire sample felt confident enough to voice a definition, and this included several people working in clinical health care and animal husbandry.

Consumer Media

Consumer media – including home computers and video games – were seen as having enormous potential to corrupt people, especially children. On one hand, the stories and images themselves are seen as being potentially damaging, with several examples of copycat killings drawn from popular news media.

On the other hand, there is another anxiety of a more complex nature, that as children learn to use various media devices, they also construct a veneer of technology that provides a diaphanous barrier between themselves and the physical, non-mediated environment. Furthermore, some mothers in the sample reported that as their kindergarten-aged children were exposed to computers, the children became increasingly reliant on computers for their entertainment. These children have begun to lose interest in playing games or live animals and wanted to surf the net all day.

'Anything that is too much of is not healthy, you know what I mean, he has to learn that because it’s the way of life now but he also has to do the other things that children do.'
Rural participant

Transport

Transport was described as a field of technological development about which many people know practically nothing at a technical level, but which impacts enormously on our everyday lives. It was pointed out that despite technical ignorance of auto-mechanics, most people are highly aware of the negative impact cars have on the atmosphere, yet few people with access to a car would reject the use of a car just because of these negative impacts on the environment.

In addition, transport was also singled out as a form of technology that seems likely to have an impact on the potential of the human race to evolve physically:

It makes things more efficient and everything. I think of motorcars as being technologically advanced. It’s good in that it makes us real efficient, but the bad part: how the human race evolves, right, I think technology is actually stopping humans evolving … ‘cause we’ve got cars, our bodies don’t have to be physical … now we’ve got technology, we don’t need to evolve to the next step. We’ve got planes and [stuff] to do that for us.’
Male, early 20s

Medicine

Medicine was cited as a form of technology that has enormous, obvious benefits to the human race and society in general. Almost as soon as it was mentioned however, medicine was also discussed as an area in which science is conducted for its own sake, often with questionable outputs – if any – for patients or the community.

For example, much medical science was perceived to be about extending human life, yet there was an awareness that at the point at which science can prolong life, life itself may not be worth living:

‘Some of these people you really wonder whether they wake up and say “I am still alive but I am in absolute agony and I can’t express myself, I can’t communicate to these people that I would like them to up the morphine until I just go to sleep” … A lot of elderly people would have died years ago but now we have got these advancements that extend peoples lives but where is the quality? Is it necessarily a good thing?’

‘But then you think what if it was you.’

‘For sure.’  

Parents aged 20 – 35

Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear physics was described by some as a classic example of a breakthrough area of science that had been hijacked by various forces in a way that had worked to the detriment of humankind.

Furthermore, there was agreement that the responsibility for this mis-appropriation of science was by no means easy to track, because while the science was developed by theoretical and lab-bound physicists, the military application was commissioned ultimately by state governments.

Nuclear weapons are therefore available as a powerful argument for extreme caution in the development of any form of scientific research. This is because their own evolution can be seen as an inevitable outcome of undoubted negative impact on humanity, yet with no single entity being in a position of culpability or accountability.

Immunisation

Among parents there was a high degree of awareness of immunisation as a science that has developed faster than society has been able to adequately understand at a general level. Whereas some pre-schools now refuse entry to children without immunisation certificates, parents themselves are exposed to a highly polarised debate and find it hard to get advice that is either impartial or in plain language.

It may be a pertinent corollary to the human embryo research debate that parents going through the decision to immunise their children – or not – are seeking advice as much as information. That is, scientific information in this scenario is only as useful as its implications in the individual’s life. For many, knowing that not immunising their children may limit their childcare options is enough to feel like they are making an informed decision.

Section Summary

Human embryo research was not mentioned within the catalogue of science and technologies that have a high impact in people’s daily lives. However, human cloning was invoked as a classic example of where science will end up if the proper regulations are not imposed on the scientific community, and those who commission research.

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