It seems like most technological innovations are met with optimism from the scientific community and trepidation from the public. Science said, "Let's work with nuclear power!" The public said, "I'm still a little worried about this whole 'igniting the atmosphere' thing." Not so with nanotechnology. In a new report surveying American households and a sampling of 363 leading U.S. nanotechnology scientists and engineers, scientists are consistently more worried about the unknown effects of nanotech than the public.
"Scientists aren't saying there are problems," said the study's lead author, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Dietram Scheufele. "They're saying, 'we don't know. The research hasn't been done.'"
The scientists are optimistic, but they're significantly more concerned about potential negative effects.
The public, though, isn't even really aware that there's something to research when it comes to possible health or environmental impacts of nanotechnology. According to the authors, that's because the mini-bots are just now creeping up on the political agenda and the media hasn't devoted much time to the subject.
20% of the responding scientists expressed some concern over new forms of nanotechnology pollution, but only 15 percent of the public was worried. Over 30 percent of scientists worried about effects on human health; 20 percent of the public felt the same.
Instead the peanut gallery is worried more about privacy violations and loss of American jobs to to what I like to imagine as a horde of tiny automatons with cameras and microphones.
"Nanotechnology is starting to emerge on the policy agenda, but with the public, it's not on their radar," says Scheufele. "That's where we have the largest communication gap."
I'd like to go ahead and say on record that I'm a uniter on the subject: tiny robots both excite me and freak me out.
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