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Scientists have only begun to investigate whether nanotechnology poses any threats to the environment and public health and, if so, what steps should be taken to mitigate them. But as formative as our understanding of nanotechnology’s risks might be, our understanding of how to communicate scientific evidence of those potential risks to the public is even more primitive.

The study of risk perception teaches that the transmission of risk information is fraught with potential for misadventure. On matters as diverse as climate change and gun control, domestic tism and silicone breast implants, ordinary people form strong, and instantaneous, emotional reactions that thereafter color how they interpret hard empirical evidence. Social psychologists have made substantial advances in documenting the operation of these forces, but to date, there have been only a handful of studies exploring
systematically how they might shape public responses to nanotechnology.

Even more important, the studies have not offered recommendations on how these forces might be constructively guided to ensure informed public perceptions and discourse...계속