nanoREV.

Opinion formation and Nanotech Funding - Part 1

An ethical dilemma with nanotech?

It turns out that a survey conducted by Dietram Scheufele, et. al. , shows that people who have “high religiosity” (i.e. are very religious) also have lower support for Federal Funding of Nanotechnology as compared to people with “low religiosity” (i.e. not so religious).

This result isn’t very surprising. The current debate on stem cell research shows a similar trend. However, what is surprising is that the lower support from the high-religiosity folks, when quantified on a scale from 1-10, stayed constant, regardless of educational level or knowledge of nanotechnology. Meanwhile, the support for Federal Nanotechnology Funding increased almost linearly with respect to increasing educational level/knowledge of the technology for those who didn’t express religion as being a major part of their daily lives.

One important question needs to be answered. Can the perception of risk, with little knowledge of nanotechnology, result in decreased funding for future research? One need not look too far to find evidence of the possibility.

The idea that support for Nanotechnology funding can be high or low based on a “religiosity” factor is interesting, but what’s more interesting is to study how the people with little to no knowledge on the topic who took part in the survey, formed their opinions in the first place. In a future post, I’ll discuss Dr. Scheufele’s conclusions on how ethics of the technology are guided by various factors such as health/risk assumptions, media influence and perceived benefits.