This project conducted an online public survey on synthetic biology and genome editing technologies. Existing questionnaire surveys tend to disregard respondents’ ambiguous or ambivalent perceptions of emerging biomedical technologies, where simpler methods and conclusions give more immediate academic and policy impacts but are often misleading. Instead, we developed a novel method to examine respondents’ ambiguity and serve a more cautious, evidence-informed policy making. A key finding from our survey is that most of the public respondents displayed a two-sided, non-judgmental, or reserved attitude toward emerging biotechnologies. We also found that such indecision in public attitudes is related to the cognitive image of the self and future generations.

Aiko Hibino, Go Yoshizawa and Jusaku Minari
Meaning of Ambiguity: A Japanese Survey on Synthetic Biology and Genome Editing
Frontiers in Sociology, 4:81 (2019).