Thank you and I'd switched the title
around a little bit
and I'm trying to not pull the plug by the way while I'm talking
because usually I walk around doing presentations but I can't,
so I'm double plugged in but it'll work out somehow.
What I want to spend a little bit of time on is talking about four different things
(A) Historically how we we maneuvered our ways, mostly poorly,
through issues related to genome editing broadly construed, or gene editing.
I want to talk about why I think we're
in somewhat of a new area of science, era of science rather,
compared to what we used to be
and why we're really bad at talking about it,
or still stick to old ways of talking about it
why that matters for CRISPR in particular
and for technologies like CRISPR I'll talk about some others
and end with what I think is the need for the broader conversations
that were echoed in the National Academies report
that we issued on human genome editing in 2017,
but let me start from the beginning.
So this is the Wisconsin campus, we're land-grant like you guys are.
This is 1840s-1850s and campus obviously looks completely different now.
This is actually my office up there
so that building on the top left-hand corner.
You can't see that but it used to be cheese making.
So it was a bunch of guys, literally guys, with mustaches
learning how to make cheese and making cheese in the basement.
Now it's science communication and that
probably tells you a little bit of kind
of where where the where the priorities
are but Wisconsin is one of those places
like Cornell and other land grants that
still have a communication program in
the College of Agriculture and life sciences and
a large part of that is the idea that
back in when the hatch Morrill Act
was still in Morrill Act still first
came along the idea that we don't just
do work on crops on crossbreeding on all
these things back then but we also in
the direct language was I think we teach
farmers to grow two blades instead of
blades of grass instead of one so we
don't just do the research on it we also
take this to the community and then I
started at Cornell at some point as an
assistant professor just after John
Losey had published his BT corn study
that non peer-reviewed letter in nature
where he linked BT corn to mortality rate
of monarch butterflies and of
course also the flavor saver tomato,
you know, the infamous start to GMOs with very little of a value proposition you know
the type of tomato that didn't taste
very good but at least it lasted for every new fridge
and I think that began a fairly poor string of communication choices
one of the most successful pieces of communication of rounding GMO was this, and this this on every single
this is actually the original, I took this from Cornell at every single dining room table in the dining halls.
Tony the Frank and Tiger, genetically frosted flakes and Franken food
and I'll come back to why this was such an effective campaign
and why that communicated the essence of why, of opposition to GM, so effectively.
That came back of course, the idea of
Frankenstein and a test tube came back
in the when Jack Craig Venter inserted synthetic DNA into a live bacterial cell
in 2010
and then when we rolled out the report on human genome editing
the idea that there are very different ways of looking at even the same Academy's
report.
That was the report.
This was one piece of writing that came out and some
of you know Antonio's writing that
basically said something that was the
exact opposite of what we said meaning
designer babies is something where we
drew a very bright red line and some
media outlets picked up on that in some
media outlets said it the exact opposite.
So again this, I think, highlights
really nicely how complex some of these issues are
and how difficult it is to
for citizens to make sense of them as
they're looking at two pieces of
coverage on the exact same day of the same of the same report.
So, why is that such a new problem than if that's always been like this?
I just told you that
we've been doing this for a long time
but I do think that we're
dealing with a new type of science and I
don't just think that I think there's
lots of research that supports that we I
think we're dealing with a lot of the
technical risks much better than we did in the past
and much more efficiently
while we were writing the report of
human genome editing research on off
target effects was developing literally
by the month and in new studies coming
out and we had to adjust the report to what the status was on the research.
That's not the issue and it's not the issue
most survey research suggests in most people's minds.
They trust us to do the
science, well that's not the issue.
What the questions are, that are
coming up, are questions that have to do
with do we have enough time to talk
through some of the social the societal complexities.
The LAPD for example is
using a program named how Palantir bus
that's that's being used by, to basically use your social media traffic,
your social connections, your Facebook networks to identify
the likelihood that you might commit a
crime, so to identify pre-suspects.
So if your friend that you you know
exchanged a lot of emails with or you do
a lot of other things with ends up being
arrested you're much more likely get pulled over by the police.
You can already see what all the problems are with that the Mission Impossible type of problems,
but the the the key issue here is actually the the idea that we've that we're rolling out these technologies
without us ever having had the chance to
talk through them society or their implications.
A lot of them are not just things that we haven't talked through but they clearly challenge our value systems.
Chimeric embryos, things that are being done at Salk and elsewhere that challenge a whole set
and I'll show you some of them and how that plays out in a second
but most importantly they raise questions that we as scientists cannot answer with science.
AI and self-driving cars, good example
neural networks and cameras recognizing people in Phoenix Arizona and Tempe and still running them over
this is work that people at Carnegie Mellon are doing on hacking traffic signs for instance.
Most cars on the road today, most self-driving cars, interpret this is a 45 mile an hour sign.
It's just a few white hidden black
stripes on it and and which for every
human of course is a stop sign but for
most self-driving cars it's not.
And of course all of these cars are programmed to kill the driver under some circumstances,
meaning we're telling
people that there's a technology that if
they buy a self-driving car and their
children are gonna be in there there's a
very small slice of moral choices that
this car is gonna make that will kill their child.
There's a grandmother walking across the street slowly, there's a kindergarten class
I'm spinning out of control on black ice and in Wisconsin everyday scenario in the winter
that it may be the best moral choice to crash into a wall and avoid killing anybody else
so we're having huge societal debates around these fast-moving issues that challenge our belief systems with little time to to talk
and I think that that's almost every single new technology that's coming up now
from AI to CRISPR to whatever, whatever else.
Our response to that is to fall back to a very 1950s model of communicating
that's been around forever we called the
knowledge deficit model we've all heard it.
It's basically the idea and I'm putting somewhat unfairly Bill Nye the Science Guy there
but the person that an
old white male with a bowtie who is really a caricature of a scientist
would be our model of how to best communicate with a highly diverse set of audiences is an interesting premise.
I'm saying that expecting pushback later and we can talk about that
but the knowledge deficit model basically says if people only understood the science the way we did
they would make better choices, and
they would be more supportive of the scientific enterprise.
The really paradoxical piece with that and especially for those of us who do empirical work in this area
is that it's the one area of science where we refuse to believe in scientific evidence
because every single piece of scientific evidence that we've collected on this model says it doesn't work
meaning the more people know doesn't make necessarily a difference
in terms of how supportive they are of the science
how willing they're to use the applications
that come out of the science or anything else.
That's why I use that little Lego
zombie
because somebody, this is not my terminology I wish I'd come up with this, called this the zombie of science communication.
It doesn't matter how much
data we throw at it and try to kill it
it'll come back up and I promise you at
the next conference that you go to where
you talk about any emerging technology,
somebody's going to say
we need to teach the public
we need to educate them
better
they need to understand
all of which are normatively correct statements
but all of which are empirically not going to translate into more support
let me show you this just one piece from embryonic stem cell research
where we give in surveys we give people quizzes
we ask them scientific questions and it
can get six of them right five of them
right none of them right and I just
grouped them into two different and my
pointer either gave up or it's the other
one
it doesn't matter on the left you see
the the people who are low on knowledge
so these are people that didn't answer a
lot of questions correctly on the right
these are people who answered most of
the questions correctly I just grouped
them together for the sake of showing of
the results you it's all controlling out
age education all the other variables
and on the y axis you see support for
embryonic stem cell research and so this
is basically the knowledge deficit model
the people who have more knowledge are
more supportive tricky part with it
that's only people who score low or who
sell who rate themselves Louis on
religiosity people who self-identifies
highly religious look like this and it's
the perfectly flat line the people on
the right that yellow group on the right
here oops let me go back here at yellow
group on the right here is actually
really important because they just
answered all the questions correctly
they know the science they understand
the scientific facts behind embryonic
stem cell research and its importance
for basic research and they still don't
translate into more positive attitudes
and receive this the exact same pattern
across different scientific issues so
that's what I was saying earlier the
irony is that we're not being scientific
in terms of how we approach science
communication which is really only air
science where we're doing that but where
we're basically saying we're ignoring
all available evidence and still
continue to communicate in ways that
focuses on facts and of course it's
particularly interesting I still am at
the point in my life where I've spent
more time in Europe growing up then I
have spent in the u.s. I think I'm one
year away from being at half time but
I'm always looking at the US still with
some amazement because it's a very
different country than most other
countries this graph here plots on the
x-axis the per capita GDP and then on
the
y-axis the percentage of people who
think that religion is very important
for them and you can see if you start at
the top left Pakistan Indonesia
countries that have lower GDP per capita
and as you go up all the way to the
right you see Canada Australia Germany
Britain and so on and so forth and if
you haven't figured out good where the
US is it's literally off the charts but
it's up here on the right so the u.s. is
is has unbelievably high GDP per capita
but it's also up there with countries
that are that are much lower on that on
that scale why am I putting this tweet
there I'll show you two others because I
think we as scientists often communicate
in ways that that feeds the beast and
that completely ends up being
dysfunctional so this is Neil deGrasse
Tyson on this day long ago a child was
born who by the age of 30 would
transform the world happy birthday Isaac
Newton he tweeted that on December 25
trolling Christians on Christmas is
really funny in many ways but it's not
going to open hearts and minds when it
comes to technologies that are that are
potentially deeply at odds with people's
religious values especially in this
country one of the most prominent
prominent climate scientists Michael
Mann just got an outreach in
communication to work from the triple-a
s the American Association for the
Advancement of science reads that nobody
who is a Republican in Congress is safe
to have an in either the house or the
Senate again if I'm trying to build
bridges to conservatives who may not
believe in the type of research that I'm
trying to get them to believe in this
may not be the the the best way of
opening conversations and of course
Richard Dawkins who never has a problem
alienating audiences this one on embryos
and on on on fetal research again were
the the policy buy-in that I'm trying to
get for tissue engineering and some
other basic research that isn't
necessary to push scientific frontiers
is not going to be helped with that
particular type of conversation so I
just want to highlight some of the the
potential and I'm being totally unfair
to these people because in many ways
they're good communicators for for for
certain audiences it's just that every
so often those missteps don't really
help why does this
create a particular problem for crisper
and I want to just show you some
surprising what I thought when we
collected these data surprising results
from National Survey data in the US so
when we did the report we were really
concerned about germline editing and
that's really what the report reflects
and and weather report Billy puts a
stake in the ground and cautions and
kind of outlines and I understand that
Alta Chara is coming out to speak here
as well so she can speak to that even
more eloquently since she was one of the
co-chairs that I can but basically
outlined a bunch of conditions that
would have to be met for us to even
cross that barrier including broad
public involvement but when you actually
look at public opinion and we collected
these data after the report came out
it's actually interesting if that in
it's interesting that in many ways the
line that people draw for public opinion
is really between therapy and
enhancement rather than between somatic
and germline so in other words they're
there they're not opposed majority
they're not opposed to germline editing
if it's for therapeutic purposes and
that's a really interesting distinction
that that I wouldn't have necessarily
anticipated in public attitudes at this
stage so things are actually not bleak
in the sense that there is you know
broad opposition to things that may be
important therapies that we're working
on even if it involves editing the human
germline but there's some a few other
things that are I think important and
that is a CRISPR it's just a an
extension of some of the patterns that
we've seen for previous technologies so
we take for example in a large national
survey we split that into three randomly
assigned groups and the reason we do
that is so that one technology doesn't
doesn't contaminate another so that
answers if you answer questions about
nuclear energy for instance that
wouldn't contaminate your answers on
Nano because you're still thinking about
nuclear so we basically randomly
assigned people and we asked them to
which degree they agree or disagree that
this kind of technology conflicts with a
Morrible it just views or blurs the line
between God and man and for nuclear you
can see it's a legacy technology not
really a lot of pick up on that argument
on
on a on that scale on that ten-point
scale but then you wait for you go to
nanotechnology where we're for the first
time creating materials that don't exist
in nature new types of molecules you can
see the the pickup going up and then for
synthetic biology of course it pushes it
even further the CRISPR is just the
logical extension in that in a heads in
the minds of a lot of a lot of audience
members and and and that's why this this
element of values and us communicating
in ways that doesn't protrude asleep
aisle eight or
puts ourselves as scientists at odds
with with public values is so important
one of the areas where that can play out
is scientific trust one of the things
that that I think we we argue very often
is that that the public trusts is less
than ever before that's factually not
true the National Science Board has
collected since the nineteen sixties
public opinion data on public trust in
science there's only one institution in
the u.s. that outperforms science in
terms of general levels of trust and
it's the military and it's only with
bumps after after 9/11 everybody else is
a below all the other institutions or
they're declining the press Congress the
White House the executive branch they're
all declining science has not only not
declined it's it's it's the second most
trusted source but that depends on on
who you're talking to and this one and
this one we asked in the same survey
that I just showed you data from we
asked people if they trust information
the following information sources for
for emerging technologies such as CRISPR
and I'm breaking people down here into
high low medium religiosity these are
University scientists these are federal
agencies like the FDA these are
religious groups then these are other
parents for instance when it comes to
editing the genome of your child the
dark blue bars are really important one
here because they're the ones that
almost that are stable I should have put
air bars here but they're almost stable
across meaning for highly religious
audiences all of these groups have equal
levels of trust if those are the parents
if those are religious groups if those
are us as University scientists so we
have we're not ahead of other groups
when it comes to being trusted as an
information source and and that makes it
even more important for us to be very
careful is the wrong word but to be
cognizant of how to how to effectively
open conversations and conduct
conversations about this why because
partly the public and by the public I
mean us every single person in this room
come to this not as a blank slate but
with a lot of prior values convictions
things that are important to us and
since the 80s we've actually done
research on this insight and in
psychology and political psychology but
in science communication we've
discovered this somewhat more recently
again mostly because we haven't paid as
much attention to evidence as we do in
other areas of science but this is the
idea of motivated reasoning
it's an old concept and and I always put
these two here because as a German I'm
always fascinated about how quickly this
country rolls out the Hitler comparisons
the top one is is George Bush and
standardized testing and education the
bottom one is healthcare so Obama was
Hitler because he wanted a public option
health care for everybody Bush was
Hitler because he want to standardize
testing in education the last time I
checked neither education nor health
care were really in the standard fascist
portfolio but theum but the point being
what is one person's healthcare is
somebody else's fascism what's one
person's education standardized testing
is somebody else's fascism how does that
work
it works by what some people have called
in that field confirmation dis
confirmation bias isn't if some of you
have heard about this right I and but
very often it's misinterpreted saying
well people ignore facts no no that's
not what it says
what confirmation bias II say is if I
line up ten facts in front of you and we
all agree those facts are true we all
agree those are scientific facts there's
no debate about them each one of us is
still gonna weigh more heavily those
facts that fit our prior beliefs and
values and we're gonna vey gonna weigh
this confirmation less heavily those
facts that don't fit we're still
acknowledging was - they just don't go
into our attitudes as much and that's
what's called biased assimilate
and biased assimilation is really very
pernicious in how it plays out because
it basically says I'm making the facts
fit my value system I'm assimilating the
world the assimilating reality to my
values rather than the other way around
by technically I should get new
scientific facts and I'm adjusting my
values my belief systems but I'm
actually doing it the other way around
that's what biased assimilation is all
about and of course I'm doing this
because I don't want to constantly have
my religion question my ideologies
question the things of what I believe is
not our natural question the the Yaak
reaction that I have to GM crops and
GMOs question so what I do is every time
a new study comes out that says it's
safe
oh it can't be true because it's funded
by industry so I don't have to so I can
basically motivated lis reason my way
out of it and we all do that all the
time it's not that this is them we do
this constantly the reason why we have
some of the lowest vaccination rates in
childcare facilities in the in the in
the childcare facilities of Cisco
Systems and Facebook and Google and
Silicon Valley is not because these
people are not highly educated and
trained and some of the best
universities is because they used a
motivated reasoning to basically
continue to hold on to Wakefield and and
and other studies that have been
retracted because otherwise we would
have to change our views of what's
natural and and so on but most
importantly and this is again where it
brings us back to Chris where this is
George Bush with snowflake babies right
so the idea that we we shouldn't use
leftover embryos from IVF that parents
have consented to be being used to
research we shouldn't use those for
research we should have those adopted
and and parents should raise unless
they're children because look this is
what you could have if you didn't use
them for research and you can see how
the same scientific fact or the same
fact means very different things to
different people depending on what value
system they bring they bring to the
table this is the this is the tricky
part of these emerging technologies this
is the tricky part of what I started out
with when I said they don't have
scientific answers I can't tell you what
the answer is to this problem to this
moral dilemma
let me show you one other example it's a
little bit closer to home our still
governor but soon no longer governor
Scott Walker a cut 300 million dollars
from the University of Wisconsin System
to give it to the Milwaukee Bucks it's
our professional basketball team which
is a communication battle we should have
won easily that's
you did anyway and so what we I mean
what of course University said you don't
understand because look all this
research all this money you're taking
some of it is matching money from USDA
and the OE grants on biofuels you're
actually taking economic value away from
the state because this is economic value
that goes from research that goes
straight into the state and of course
yeah that's kind of true but it depends
on what you're motivated visas and so we
just happen to have a survey in the
field at the time when we looked at
again on the x-axis information intake
you you pay attention to a lot of news
or you have low information intake
meaning the more facts you get it with a
fewer facts you get and then here on the
Y I just plotted do people see net
positive economic impact on the state or
a net negative impact and for Democrats
the more information they get the more
excited they get about biofuels got more
facts they get and you can see where the
white space is so you know where this is
going this is Republicans all right so
two things that are really important
your a and about maybe three things
ain't nobody's right both of them take
away from what they want something that
B enforces their their their
predispositions number two is more facts
don't bring people closer together or
don't make them more Pro science in fact
and this is number three
they polarized them and the most
polarized people are the people with the
most information so they're not the ones
who are uninformed those are not the
polarized ones the polarized ones are
the more science I throw at them and the
more scientific facts I feel at them the
more polarized they get we've seen this
from Dan kahan work and culture
cognition we've seen this from our work
here it was at Wisconsin we've seen this
from pretty much every piece of evidence
on emerging science so that pushes that
knowledge deficit model saying even
further because it says you communicate
in a way that doesn't allow people to
meaningfully connect what you're saying
to their values you're gonna create a
problem and you're gonna create a
problem where you were you're widening
gaps rather than narrowing them so all
of that of course is and that's just the
last thing i will mention on this topic
is based on or is complicated by the
idea that it's not us talking to the
public we're just that's just one diet
there are lots of other players in this
in the communication space and GM crops
is not an example and not an exception
Academy's report came out two or three
years ago I think with Fred Gould at NC
State chairing this one went through 15
1600 peer-reviewed studies to answer the
question our GM crops genetically
modified crops any less safe to eat and
traditionally bred or grown crops and
and of course they found absolutely no
evidence to support that conclusion not
a single study there are other issues
that they touched on that one can have a
different take on but the health effects
they they were unequivocal and based on
on broad broad scientific consensus but
of course that was not the first or the
last piece of communication and now
coming back to the Toni the Franken
tiger
why is Franken as a half-crazed additive
food such a powerful piece of
communication and the answer is because
it gives me zero pieces of information
it doesn't teach me anything what it
says is it connects a scientific issue
to a mental bucket that I have and that
mental bucket is Frankenstein a
scientist who does stuff out of pure
hubris put stuff together that doesn't
belong together transgenics that stuff
gets out of control and we can't bring
it back into the lab and again all of
that happens because scientists could
and didn't think about the side the
social societal impacts of their work
and I said all of that simply by saying
Franken because you've seen the movie of
your you've read the book and it works
as I gave you a simple that's how we all
process of information we put them on
mental shelves as I said earlier once
the Franken fruit frame was established
it was there to stay and ironically
again science tells us exactly how this
works in fact Nobel prize-winning
science Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel
Prize in 2002 as a psychologist in
economics because he and his colleague
who unfortunately had passed away at the
time which is why they didn't share the
prize basically said every single time
we look at the world we look at it
through a particular frame of reference
we don't look at at the world with a
blank slate but we have all these mental
buckets that didn't quite say it that
way but that's basic
what they're what they're alluding to
and is it well science is actually they
said this is particularly strong as an
effect if you have an ambiguous stimulus
or it's unclear what that stimulus means
this is science as an ambiguous stimulus
this is an experiment you know sometimes
you in social sciences I'm sure in the
bench science it's the same way you see
a study like damn I wish I had done that
this is the one that I wish I had done
but a I wasn't born in 1955 and B
probably wouldn't have been smart enough
anyway but this basically what they did
is super simple design
they give what they called a broken B
stimulus so it could be a 1 in a 3 or it
could be a letter B this is stem-cell
research that's curing Alzheimer's one
in three or it's killing unborn life a B
and I can completely set your frame of
reference I can activate a mental bucket
by putting you in Group A or randomly
assign your into Group B and the exact
same stimulus that's sitting in the
middle is going to obviously mean
different things because I activated
different mental buckets that's what
frankenfood does it basically says you
could think about GM crops about saving
the world by them in a deficiencies you
could think about a lot of different
things you know 10 billion people by
2100 that we need to feed or you can
think about it in the way frankenfood
would suggest you should think about it
so that's basically what they ended up
winning a Nobel Prize for in 2002 and
since then has has really become a large
part of how we understand communication
defense and framing is something that's
not misleading it's not spinning
something it's something that if I talk
to you and and we have a conversation
and I don't get my points across I'm
gonna try a different angle and it
should get on a different makeup mental
bucket right so it tells me why should I
pay attention to an issue in the first
place there's lots of issues today that
it should be attention of paying
attention to why GM crops why CRISPR why
science in the first place and so that's
why we see a lot of these war and
conflict metaphors there's a great piece
that that Matt Nesbitt was not
northeastern and Dominic Brossard was in
my department and and again crouched it
where they show that for stem-cell
research for instance there's lots of
research lots of coverage that never got
any pick up until
the political conflict started in
Congress and hearing started and press
releases started coming up and all of a
sudden coverage started picking up and
everybody started paying attention to
stem cell when it became conflict Laden
and everything was reduced to embryonic
work basically so that's part of the
problem
framing something early and framing
something in a way that that that makes
a value proposition is crucially
important it tells us why I should take
the risk if I see it this right why
should i why should I support editing
the human genome unless there is a value
that pays off and that I see and that
that's relevant to me in to my value
system and basically why how can i
connect applications of that science to
my own personal belief systems and I
just want to use climate as an example
because climate I think we've run into
the ground as an issue it's almost not
salvageable if you say climate change
most conservatives are gonna tense up
and and and not listen to you
and that's there's lots of research on
that that show is that the word climate
change doesn't doesn't work for them but
Mitt Romney before he was forced through
you know 13 14 15 primary debates into a
weird stance on climate change when he
ran actually had a really good approach
to it because he basically said two
things um well three things crime is
number one I'll never talk about climate
change because my constituencies don't
like what I will talk about is is global
competitiveness the Germans and
Europeans have been investing in green
energy for a long time and they will
sell it to China eventually because
China will need it every summer you see
Beijing under a cloud of smog somebody
will make a lot of money from that
market if you want it to be the u.s.
being a global player and and and being
being competitive in that market you
need to invest in green energy not
because of climate change which I'm not
even mentioning but because of the value
that matters to you global
competitiveness u.s. global
competitiveness
number two energy independence you don't
want to fight wars and countries that
you can't pronounce and put accurately
place on a map and you don't want to
send your children to die there you need
to invest in green energy renewables not
because of climate change not because of
the environment not because of any of
the things that politically you don't
like
because they'd started with Al Gore
after the 2000 election but because of
values that matter to you so can I
basically make a embed the technology in
a way that resonates with a value system
of a group that based on the science
itself would be opposed to it ultimately
my outcome of course is dis right I
don't want people to drive 12-cylinder
cars if they drive them around by
themselves but not because of climate
change because of the values that go
into global competitiveness and energy
in the energy independence meaning
values that are actually important to
them and across the political aisle so
let me just add with one last thing and
that is the because I do want to make
sure that we have some time to chat as a
group but and that's the need for some
of these broader conversations and I
think we've heard this from lots of
different communities including bench
scientific communities at this
institution as well and that's the the
the the data from from the same survey
that I showed you earlier and we
basically asked a couple of questions
here one is is the scientific community
on the left-hand side is the scientific
community capable of guiding the
development of new technologies in a
responsible way and again I'll show you
the breakdowns here in a second and then
the question if scientists should
consult with the public they should have
these broader conversations and again
breakdowns by religion and you see clear
differences here and break down to my
knowledge and it goes almost in the
opposite direction right the more
knowledgeable you are the more you trust
the scientific community to be able to
roll this out in the responsible fashion
the more religious you are the less
likely you are to think that the
scientific community can do this but in
spite of these rifts here we see fairly
broad agreement across both the most
highly knowledgeable and the most highly
religious both think that scientists
should involve the public in broader
conversations which echoes what the
report says the the academies report
says that says we need much far out of
conversations than what we've currently
built into the approval process with a
recombinant DNA Advisory Committee at
the FDA and other processes that are
really I would I would personally call a
fairly minimalist as far as public
opinion and public involvement is
concerned
but of course all of this we're doing in
an environment that I've just described
in a fairly depressing way right in a
highly polarized information influx
produces even more polarization so how
do we do this well and an Alan leshner
who many of you know is the former CEO
of the triple-a s the American
Association for the Advancement of
science I think I spoken to this quite
powerfully about this open
bi-directional dialogue that we need
this kind of engagement but usually
that's where the court ends and people
leave out the second part and what he
actually talked about is both about the
perils and the pitfalls or the promise
but also the perils and the pitfall so
in other words if we're having this
broader conversation we do need to
expect questions that are not just about
the negative parts of the science but
also about areas of the signs that have
societal impacts political impacts and
we need to be ready to have answers
that's not our field as bench scientists
but we're gonna be asked those questions
and to simply say well we don't have a
scientific answer to that so that's not
a relevant concern is exactly what got
us into trouble with GMOs it's what got
us into trouble with with embryonic stem
cell research it's what got us into
trouble with tissue engineering and a
bunch of other fields so what one of the
things that we're working on right now
and we just started Lee and I were
talking about this before on an NSF
grant that we're just starting out on
trying to new I trying out new ways of
in building engagement that that
minimizes or depolarizes to debate so
that doesn't produce that widening gap
as people learn more they move further
apart but actually how can we get them
to to use the scientific facts that they
need to have a meaningful discussion and
still come together and not necessarily
end up in the same spot but at least in
a spot where they can have a meaningful
conversation about some of those values
the piloting that we did on this was
actually with University students and
what we did is we know from social
science that one of the strongest
influences in our daily lives is not
wanting to make a fool of ourselves that
sounds really weird but this is the
reason why I'm wearing skinny jeans and
a tie right there is no rational reason
for this at all why did we ever come
back to skinny jeans
no clue why am I wearing a strip of
cloth around my neck
I have no rational idea why that is but
one does it and I look around everybody
else does it's a mime wearing skinny
jeans again and at some point they're
gonna get different again in my shirts
are gonna get wide again even though
they're tailored now and so on why
because everybody else does it so one of
the things that we know from psychology
is how important group pressure is the
ash experiments for the fifties and
sixties and there's been lots of
interesting work at Penn and elsewhere
that says can we get people out of there
motivated reasoning by by giving them
the impression that somebody else is
watching and so what we ended up doing
is we ended up putting students this is
for nanotechnology putting them in an
experiment basically four different
randomly assigned conditions so
condition one is here's a bunch of
information on nanotechnology afterwards
we're going to ask you questions period
number two is
let's start with this here's a bunch of
information about nanotechnology
afterwards you will fill out a
questionnaire and then we're gonna have
you discuss with other people they never
had to have the discussion we put them
in a discussion so they wouldn't go away
and tell their friends and the
subsequent rounds of experiments that
they didn't have a discussion the
discussion was meaningless
then here discussion with people that
disagree with you we told them
explicitly that people will actually
have an opinion different from you and
here people who will be similar to you
and then we allowed them to go into it's
called a gated information environment
it looks like an online set of articles
but it really they can't go outside of
it so we know exactly where they spend
time bunch of articles in three
different groups general news science
and medicine and then editorial an
opinion and the animation already came
up and that's the important part here
the editorial opinions are the two-sided
ones so who goes to basically
information that disagrees with their
previous attitudes and if you compare
the numbers in the red meaning the
percentages that actually go to the
two-sided information that potentially
contradicts their viewpoints meaning
they don't engage in biased assimilation
in motivated reasoning every number in
there is larger than a 15.4 that you see
for the no discussion so just
threatening undergrads who the idea that
they will have to
talk to other people that disagree with
them it makes them go and look up that
information but by far the highest
number is for the opposing others
meaning where they know they will have
to talk to people disagree so part of
the solution clearly lies in something
that we've forgotten how to do well in
in filter bubbles and echo chambers and
online environments that just feed us
what we already know but that's where
some of the mechanisms lie and building
around the how can we create diversion
of discussions that hopefully bring our
work around some of that motivated
reasoning just as credit to my two
co-authors and copii eyes on that Grant
mica xenos who is a political scientist
Dominic Broussard who's a geneticist and
a PhD in communication from Cornell so
they're both part of what this project
I'm gonna leave it at that I want to
just do one pitch really quick because
we were if people here to work on this
where we're just collecting articles
hopefully for a march 15th deadline for
a special issue environmental
communication on genome editing and in
agriculture in particular so this of all
places would be that and especially I
mean obviously issues related to public
perception to risk perceptions and so on
so for the social group in particular
hopefully there may be something
relevant in there so I left exactly 11
minutes for Q&A hopefully that is enough
thank you so much I appreciate them
yes I added me too so a couple of things
on that sort of one somewhat surprising
finding from that survey that we're just
writing up now and that is when it comes
to applications of CRISPR for wildlife
and ecology and I would not have
anticipated that but that's actually
where the dial really or where the
needle really goes up for the public
seeing it as unnatural which is really
strange in many ways right and and that
Nisbet who I mentioned earlier about the
study that he did on stem cell research
his dissertation at Cornell was about
what he called the yuck factor so this
idea that a lot of us approached GM with
this idea that it's it's just unnatural
it's something that we don't like Bill
Hallman at Cornell and one of the
directors in one of his surveys showed
that in surveys typically people engage
in huge social desirability effects they
don't admit what they don't know right
they pretend that they know things they
don't but even in his surveys where you
would assume they use Utes also that
desirability effect when he actually
asks people so why don't you like GMOs
they basically openly say it's a gut
reaction I just don't I don't have any
good rational reasons I just don't like
it
and I think for wildlife in particular
that is something that we really need to
be aware of the idea that CRISPR
applications where you would assume I
don't know we can save the American
chestnut right this is of course why
wouldn't we do this any answer as well
because in wildlife it's a and if this
the needle goes up much further than it
goes for human applications which is
bizarre I do would assume that putting
it into your body is something that's
much more problematic for people then
then the extinction which is an extreme
form but you know maintaining certain
kinds of Wildlife or plants or other
things so that's one but number two is I
think from from Nano in particular I
think there is no one public reaction
and one of the things that we saw for
Nano is we asked for example people what
applications they most associate with
nanotechnology so we asked long
batteries and then we correlate that
with with risk perceptions and see if
risk perceptions in those areas
translate into attitudes and you see
depending on what you're in your mind
your most connect with that technology
is what drives your risk perceptions so
it's not an objective assessment of risk
it's a it's a relative one for all of us
meaning what is most accessible and
you'll easily retrievable for memories
but
going to drive it and so I think for
crisper we're gonna have the exact same
dynamic and in many ways what our
surveys pick up on right now is a broad
conversation about therapeutic
applications and Huntington's and
tay-sachs and whatever else but it's not
picking up yet is I think a lot of the
applications that maybe with a much less
clear value proposition for patients
early on or later on and I think that's
where where the dynamics are gonna be
interesting and I think that's where
we're gonna need the most work and again
in contrast to GM where I think our
value propositions from the beginning
we're not just poor period they were
poorly communicated I think in Chris
with Chris we're in a better spot at
least in the human application side in
the beginning that that's real there's a
Dom and what's dominating the debate but
I think that'll change as we're seeing
other applications especially in why I
love in our data really are beginning to
show that that that's an agriculture
it's the other one
where I think we're especially in Europe
we'll see some some dynamics that are
that that that will see spillover
effects from from previous technologies
and it's not gonna be pretty
that's just gonna be my prediction and
not pretty I don't mean that in terms of
us our job is not to push technology
some down somebody throat by not pretty
I mean dynamics that are just at odds
with the best available scientific
consensus no no I think actually oh I'm
supposed to repeat the question so I'm
for for for especially applications in
agriculture is there a value in in in
highlighting differences between new
gene editing techniques and previous
techniques in terms of transgenics or
other things there and and and I I don't
have a really good answer so my answer
is still a little bit guessing because
we haven't done or I at least I don't
know if there's empirical work on this I
know what there's so I'm not sure how
many of you have seen food evolution and
and I think that you know there's always
been this argument that well we've
always done gene editing it's just been
called selective breeding there's good
evidence that that doesn't work right
that and it seems like a really
intuitive
argument but it actually doesn't change
anything partly because people see this
as something uniquely different
so that mechanism would suggest that yes
you're the answer to your question is
yes meaning once we can point out that
there's something about CRISPR that
avoids some of the elements of previous
editing technologies that people didn't
like that that would actually help that
I don't have any empirical evidence to
say that that well my guess would be yes
but I just don't have any data to say
yes it will be so no that's a really
yeah question about motivated reasoning
and to which degree which one drives
which right is it is it is it more
knowledgeable people become more
polarized or followers we're
knowledgeable did the data that I showed
you wouldn't be able to answer that by
themselves why because I cross-sectional
survey data so we're really it they're
really correlational those same studies
have been done experimentally so where
you randomly assign people and you
expose them to informational stimuli and
then see what those informational
stimuli do to to people as they learn
more and it shows the exact same effect
so the causality is sorted out pretty
well but but based on on these data only
your your point is well-taken the the
the the interesting thing of course
about the you know the knowledge and
polarization is that those are also the
people as we do engagement exercises
most often that we end up having in a
room meaning the people at both ends of
the spectrum who really know a lot about
the issue meaning and for GMOs I think
we see this all the time that we have a
bunch of people who read all the primary
literature who know every piece of
financing that has gone into every study
and every what they see as a conflict of
interest because your lab has at some
point taken money from from C company X
and on the other hand the people who
really think that it's important for
right if other reason so the the people
at the very end of that polarizing curve
are also the two that will show up
together in your probably meetings in
town halls and so okay I'm gonna try and
repeat that and capture that no no I
appreciate so I think the question is
you know am I am I saying that
communicating is should be moving away
from from just simply a knowledge
deficit and then and and rather frame
issues in a particular way and what does
that leave for probably what Roomba said
leave for meaningful via directional
conversations broader engagement
bringing stakeholder communities in and
so I think a I'd and every time I talk
about the knowledge deficit I think I
overstate the case in the sense that I
do think that information is crucially
important its information is unless
these public debates with or without
stakeholder communities are meaningless
unless they're based in the best
available science and we've written
about this most recently in a piece in
the Stanford Social Innovation review
with Elizabeth Kristofferson from the
Rita Allen Foundation and Brooke Smith
from the County Foundation or basically
call for that saying we need best the
best available evidence in those broader
debates but those broader debates will
be well beyond just the scientific facts
they will have to include values our job
is to not in the sometimes I get that
from bench scientists well how do we get
people to overcome their religiosity we
don't it's not gonna happen and it
shouldn't very much like a lot of my
values I hold fairly sacred religion
happens to not be one of them but a lot
of other values if you communicate
against those are you trying to convince
me that they're wrong I'm gonna close
the door on you right there so that's
not our job it shouldn't be our job not
normatively not empirically but it
should also we should avoid alienating
some of those values as we and this is
why i showed some of the tweets because
opening a conversation by saying you're
wrong and now let me tell you why i mean
i don't know what your personality is
but for me that doesn't work and i mean
if you open it that way or if you open
it again like so your religiosity i kind
of see why you're religious but let me
tell you why you shouldn't take this
into account ever so that's the that's
not going to work so thats brings us to
the third one and that is a broad public
engagement having these broader
conversations and I think those broader
conversations we often talk about a
bi-directional dialogue it's I think
multi-directional but it does involve
one thing that we very rarely mentioned
that is listening meaning actually
listening to to viewpoint instead
reroll s-pen and scientists strongly
disagree with that may not fit into the
way we think about these technologies
but the you know I say this in my
undergrad class at the beginning there's
no stupid questions in here and I think
the same thing is true for those
exercises right a patient community will
bring certain concerns and that will not
always be what we think they are so we
had this for example as part of the
human genome editing committee the deaf
community comes to us and says I don't
want to be fixed I appreciate you
telling me that it should be fixed then
that I something is wrong with me but I
don't think there's something wrong with
me and then the next question is so what
happens is some members of that
community get a genetic edit for their
children and others don't
are we then dealing with with hyper
discrimination and so on and so forth so
that's why we have neat to have these
conversations I think with the listening
part being a large part and that's also
why I think we need to have this
conversation not just with the I think
patient communities are an obvious one
I think religious communities are an
obvious one groups based on race are
already we're talking abuse things I
mean if you look at the chimeric embryos
and oh this is violates the idea of
ferme angelical sort of Christians
absolutely but what if it's a pig embryo
and an organ that's grown in a pig
embryo whatever muscles Muslim
communities what about Jewish
communities so there's lots of questions
that don't even come out until we have
that honest dialogue so I would I would
argue that we want to have the dialogue
and we want to have it but we do want to
have it with the best available science
and getting that in without constantly
insisting that we're right and and and
and and figuring that out I think that's
gonna be the tricky part I'm gonna shift
over here just because I haven't taken a
single question from here so yeah do we
still have time okay okay it's a perfect
last question if I did repeat it would
be even more perfect yes where you can
where can you get resources and training
so resources I think there's the the
National Academies is organized and I
was involved in all three of them
Sackler colloquia on the science of
science communication it kind of
summarizes where what's where the body
of work is and what we know and they're
all available the first two are special
issues of PNAS the third special issue
is going to come out in the next couple
weeks there is a report that Alan
Leffler
on science communication that the
Academy's released last year that's a
bit more of a dense treat so for what
that's worth but I think it's it's more
it is tailored at practitioners and then
lastly training opportunities I think
there's the number of different things
that are that are happening all over the
country I just mentioned one example
because Wisconsin we actually started a
PhD a transcript double PhD minor in
science communication that is grown
tremendously I teach a class and public
attitudes toward science that used to be
a core social scientist now it's
two-thirds bench scientists it's
basically a ten credit minor for
geneticists for bio physicists who will
get a degree in genetics and it will say
pH D minor and science communication and
I think what's happening is that younger
generations are increasingly younger
generations of scientists are
increasingly seeing this as a part of
their portfolio of what one has to do
and I can't remember who says this said
this but somebody said at some point
that progress in science happens mom
funeral at a time and so I think science
communication is not any different I
think we'll see a generational shift I
think we see a new outlook on on how to
communicate about these emerging
technologies as a new generation of
scientists come up and I think it's a
that's a good thing
