Whose horizons?

28 September 2007

The Science Horizons project, which earlier this month reported on a seven month study of attitudes to technology, reminded us yet again why it's so important to gauge public appetite for innovation. The harder question is - what do we do with the information?

Based on a series of events and study groups running from January to July 2007, the project, which is part of the government's wider sciencewise programme, covered everything from smart fridges that tell your supermarket when you're running low on your favourite spread, to climate change, nanotechnologies, health, energy and knowledge management. For a report of the findings, click here.

Science and Innovation minister Ian Pearson is certainly convinced of the value of these kinds of projects: 'I spend a lot of time thinking about what the world will be like in 2025 and how we will live our everyday lives. It helps with thinking about how policy needs to move forward.' What he'd give for a bit of help from David Tennant and his blue police box...

If the research really does help with policy-making, it's worth serious consideration when you weigh up the kinds of technologies you want to invest your money and energies in. But the problem with this kind of consultation, of course, is that people's perceptions are influenced by so many factors, from tabloid scaremongering at one end of the spectrum to niche, in-depth scientific research at another. Take wireless, for example. Panorama - a reasonably respected investigative TV series - warned earlier this month of the dangers of wi-fi, drawing parallels with mobile phone masts and asking why there hasn't been a similar outcry over the potential damage from wireless. It noted that almost half of Britain's schools now have wireless networks in them, emitting what it claimed was the same kind of radiation as phone masts.

Most people ridiculed the show as scaremongering. But not Sir William Stewart, chairman of the Health Protection Agency, who studied mobile phone masts for a year under Blair. He isn't so sure, and was quoted on the programme arguing that because no-one has an opt-out, it's an area you have to be very careful about, even if his agency has nonetheless concluded that the radiation levels are below acceptable levels.

When I recently asked the procurement officer for schools in one of London's biggest boroughs what he made of this supposed threat, he said he suspected it would go the same way as the immunisation debate. It's pretty much a fact of life that wireless networks are now everywhere, he argued, so it's useless swimming against the tide.

So whose opinion really matters? The Science Horizons report finds that Joe Public thinks it's 'a good thing' to be consulted on what he or she thinks about science - and that's undoubtedly true. But what exactly should their role be in deciding the government's policy on something as complex and ambiguous - in science, ethics and safety terms- as, say, nanotechnology?

By David Longworth