Why Are People Hostile to Biotechnologies?

Public debate on biotechnologies illustrates the difficulty of combining democratic forms with regulation of complex technoscientific issues. The root of the problem is often identified as a lack of “scientific literacy,” mainly caused by a distorted and alarmist representation of these issues by the mass media and associated with prejudice against science. Our study suggests that what we are witnessing represents concern for the procedures connecting scientific expertise, decision-making, and political representation. We believe that neither the elitist approach (“leave it to the experts”) nor the utopian approach (which assumes that all citizens can be transformed into scientific experts) is viable. The objection toward (some) biotechnologies seems to derive from the currently perceived absence of adequate and publicly accountable procedures for the governance of innovation.