Public Understanding of Nanotechnology: How Publics Know

Abstract

Most previous studies of public understanding of nanotechnology have found that very few members of the public know much about this emerging field. Such results set the expectation among scientists, regulators, industry, and science communicators that publics are largely ignorant of nanotechnology and, hence, unprepared to engage in a discussion about research priorities or regulation. However, things may not be as grim as these studies and the engagement skeptics make out. Because these studies have largely relied on survey research to determine public understanding, they have captured data that reflects only what individuals know in isolation (the condition in which they tend to answer such surveys). For precisely this reason, these studies tend to miss not only the “wisdom of the crowd” but even the collective knowledge and cooperative ways to reasoning that make up most of how people think and live their lives.