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Science in society:

Nanotechnology and you meeting

April 2006

How do you start a discussion about something when that ‘thing’ is not defined?

The Government’s 10 Year Investment Framework for Science and Innovation, and the think-tank Demos in their leaflet ‘See-through Science’, called for public engagement early on in the development of technologies, such as nanotechnology. The theory is that issues will be raised before products hit the market, and public views can be taken into consideration as new technologies are developed.

Our first ‘Nanotechnology and You’ discussion meeting took place at Edinburgh International Science Festival in April 2006, supported by our What is nano? exhibition.

Meeting summary

• Professor Daniel Robert from the University of Bristol spoke about his research to understand hearing in mosquitoes. Professor Robert communicated his passion for the science and people could extrapolate to useful products, such as highly sensitive microphones and sensors.
• Two other speakers at the event, Bill Cusack and Bano Murtuja, talked about a recent citizens' jury about nanotechnology. They were equally enthusiastic and Mr Cusack, as one of the jurors, inspired the audience with the value of citizens’ juries.
• Questions about regulation, impact on the environment and involving the public in decision-making highlighted some of the challenges of 'upstream' engagement. Most of the audience agreed that public involvement in decision-making was necessary and that regulation to protect health and the environment was important; however, the audience shared Professor Robert’s view that regulating something that is hard to define is difficult.

Next steps

Reasonable challenges can be made but there are no easy answers when the problems themselves are hard to define. We will continue to try to resolve these problems by using different methods of engagement, and by refining and defining the issues that we are looking at. Engaging upstream on nanotechnology and other areas of science will continue to be a challenge, but it is one to which we must be equal.

The exhibition What is nano? is currently travelling the UK, where we hope to host further discussion meetings in the future.

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