A chasm of misunderstanding: The widening gap between public perception and scientific consensus.

Abstract

The gulf between public perception and scientific consensus seems to be widening in a number of key areas with significant consequences for policy, funding and research. The science of climate change has featured prominently in this context, but profound gaps are also evident in some areas of the life sciences, including genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and risk assessment in medicine. Public acceptance and trust in science has not been helped by several high‐profile cases of fraud, deliberate falsification and the withholding of clinical trial data, some cases of which have had significant public health consequences. These have happened at a time when science is reaching ever more deeply into the lives of citizens with the rapid rise of ‘omics’ technologies, which are changing not only the life sciences, but also public health through personal DNA tests. > … science is reaching ever more deeply into the lives of citizens with the rapid rise of ‘omics’ technologies… The basis for these scientific and societal developments was laid in the 1990s with the Human Genome Project (HGP), which laid the scientific groundwork for the omics revolution that came in the next decades. The HGP improved sequencing technology, computational biology and other technologies used to generate and analyse large amounts of biological data. Socially, the publication of the sequence of the human genome in the year 2000 was accompanied by a flurry of articles, speeches and public commentary that highlighted the enormous value of the ‘blueprint of life’ and how it would enhance and revolutionize medicine. Today, sequencing an individual's genome costs just $1,000 compared with the cost of $28.8 million in 2004. The technological progress being made in sequencing and analysis and society's interest in the life science's contribution to health eventually converged a few years ago when the first companies began to …