Archive for the ‘Nanotechnology’ Category

A recent entry in this blog discussed a poll in which Americans were asked whether or not they believed nanotechnology is immoral. According to the poll, it turns out that a minority of Americans believe that research in the field of nanotechnology is moral. Regardless of what this says about the American political landscape, I feel this raises the more important issue of morality in science. Mainly, what role does morality play in science, and to what extent can we call a technology ‘immoral’?
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According to a recent poll performed by the University of Wisconsin, the majority of Americans believe that nanotechnology, or, the development and use of microscopic machines to service the body (and for many other practical purposes) is fundamentally immoral:

That’s according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin who are studying people’s attitudes towards nanotechnology, an emerging scientific field that involves manipulating molecules and atoms. They found that just 29.5% of the 1,000-plus Americans surveyed said they thought nanotechnology research was morally acceptable.

While there’s no way to be certain why so many people are opposed to nanotech, I’m inclined to agree with Mr. Worthen’s conclusion that many, if not all of those opposed are so only because they don’t actually know what nanotechnology is, and so they tie it with related fields such as stem cell research and genetic modification.

If that is the case, then it’s a somewhat disturbing confirmation of what most of us already know; That the uninformed public are predisposed to oppose science.