People want to engage with science. Don't mistake questions for controversy

Science is advancing faster than ever – and so are its impacts on our lives around the world.

That’s why public dialogue must be launched at the first sign of a significant scientific development. It’s essential for global health equity and our responsibility to each other. And we must approach dialogue with an open mind, prepared for people to disagree.

When our team announced the Synthetic Human Genome Project (SynHG) recently, some media coverage immediately described it as ‘controversial research’, as it opens up a lot of questions for future science and future society.

As a sociologist, I believe society should ask as many questions as possible about emerging science. But having questions doesn’t make science ‘controversial’. It can be the opposite.

That’s true whether these questions are born of excitement, curiosity, uncertainty or concern. They open space for meaningful public dialogue, which is essential for minimising potential harms and preventing misuse of technology. Questions from different communities can help us identify what people need and discover new ways of applying scientific knowledge.

We should always encourage people to ask questions – not automatically mistake them for scepticism or antagonism.

People want to engage with science, but few are eager to engage with ‘controversy’. That’s why I caution against framing cutting-edge science as ‘controversial’. This labelling can drive the public away from a topic, or close down conversation before it even begins.

The best way to embed a technology into a society – and to decide whether it should be embedded at all – is to encourage people to ask as many questions as possible.

Public engagement isn’t about endorsement or seeking approval. It’s both communicative and diplomatic work—navigating diverse viewpoints, repairing strained relationships and keeping dialogue open.

Instead of seeking consensus, we should move towards coordination of difference and diversity.

This means fostering global dialogue between science and society, but also industry, regulation, communities and individuals. It's more important than ever in our hyperconnected, ideologically fragmented world. And it makes for better science.

Through Care-full Synthesis, we hope to establish a new paradigm of accountable science and innovation. We’re using a new framework based on five principles – that public engagement should be open, deliberative, sensible, sensitive and innovative.

The findings will help us envision the future of genome synthesis technology, including what kind of red line should be set. They’ll enable the technology and its applications to be tailored to different global cultures, contexts and social and economic needs.

2024 UK public opinion data on engineering biology shows a high level of support. But attitudes can change when technology is applied in the real world, especially if people fear imposition without consent.

Without prior social and policy involvement, cutting-edge life science might fail to improve everyone’s wellbeing and may even worsen health inequalities. For example, making gene therapy accessible and affordable to patients in need isn’t just a scientific question, but also a socio-political and structural one.

This is why we need to encourage, rather than stigmatise, questions about emerging science, since many concerns require not only technical solutions but also social ones. This is especially important now that novel biological tools are used outside conventional scientific institutions and thus the conventional regulatory remit. This global phenomenon is called ‘science at large’. It’s a huge challenge for society, biosecurity and the development of synthetic genomics.

With the right public engagement approach, we can solve problems collectively, actively and cooperatively. In the face of widening social inequalities, it’s vital that science reflects lived realities and that diverse communities are involved in shaping its direction.

Some people describe applications of engineering biology as ‘playing God’. But I believe imposing anything universal to society is playing God – whether by insisting that every scientific opportunity must be unconditionally embraced, or by indiscriminately restricting, or even completely shutting down, a technological avenue.

Others look at science with an either/or logic, where they fear society will proceed with uniformity and there’s no way back. But that’s not true. Society has pushed back on many issues, and progress has always involved diverse forms of uptake – just look at how individuals use social media differently. It’s never an either/or and society does have agency. Public dialogue can make that agency even stronger.

It’s easy to criticise something, but it’s difficult to construct the alternative. Care-full Synthesis gives us the opportunity to construct something different: cutting-edge scientific development with science diplomacy.

I invite everyone to join us, whether supportive or sceptical.

This article was first published in 'Behind the Research', our LinkedIn newsletter sharing insights and stories from experts in global health research.