blog

Silly me, I’ve been writing research papers and neglecting my blog. But others have evidently found it anyway. Nice to see there’s a considerable amount of coverage of science and nanoscience.

This semester at Cornell, I’ve heard two talks that I really liked–both from non-scientists. I discussed one earlier and still need to continue that frame of thought. But considering the blogs on nano, it seems like a good time to discuss the other talk.

This was a talk from Prof. Bruce Lewenstein here at Cornell, who discussed his research on the public communication of nanotechnology subjects in print media and how it compares, say to biotechnology coverage. His conclusions are preliminary and not-yet-published, so I’m paraphrasing. Initial coverage generally follows the perceived benefits of nanoscale research, with some coverage on environmental, toxicology, and societal issues of any new technology. Interestingly, the so-called “grey goo” scenario is typically seen by reporters as something of a straw-man argument (correctly, in my humble opinion). But overall, nanotech coverage (and hype, obviously) has focused on the perceived benefits.

Roughly speaking, right now, nanotechnology coverage is on the upswing–more articles, positive comments, few stories mentioning possible drawbacks, etc. In some sense, the coverage mirrors early biotech coverage in terms of the memes used in stories, and the growth curve. (Although if memory serves, Lewenstein showed the growth curve for nanotech stories is faster than biotech.)

He also commented on the periodic use of the phrase “societal implications” of science and/or technology. The word “implications” gives support to the idea that science goes and does research first and society gets the results, one way or another. On the other hand, it’s fairer to talk about “social and ethical issues” which is more how science is actually done. (After all, it’s not like scientists aren’t part of society.)

Of course there’s a flip side to all of this. The number of people who know precisely what “nano” means, is quite small–and I’d believe this holds true even among some media covering the subject. So the general public perception falls back to “well, progress in science and technology is usually good, and people seem to think there are perceived benefits to this new ‘nano’ stuff, so it’s probably good.”

What happens if there’s a “nano” backlash much like there was a “biotech” backlash? If the government and the public believe we’ll have “molecular manufacturing” in 5 years and it doesn’t materialize, what does that do to the good research and/or products that have arrived?