How much of what type of information?

In the previous post I asked these questions:

What type of information should non-scientists know?

How much do they need to know?

Why should they need to know it in the first place?

I believe the public should know enough about the actual science of GM in order to make reasonable, well informed decisions. To do this, they should understand what GM is, how it works, and how it may affect them going about their daily lives.

In class we discussed how there are three types of information when it comes to science: the raw data, the information that comes from interpreting that data (This one is a bit tricky, because different people, even different scientists, may interpret data in different ways. For the sake of this post, let’s assume that all information is interpreted correctly by everyone.), and then there is the knowledge that comes from combining various sets of information.

With GM, I think the public has no need to know of the raw data, as they most likely wouldn’t know what to do with it. 

When raw data is presented, it will be interpreted by the person reading it from their past experiences – if they know nothing of the science, how can they interpret the data? This can lead to misunderstanding, which in turn can sometimes lead to hysteria. 

For example, pretend a test showed that 1 out of 1000 mice died during an experiment where the mice were fed GM food. To the scientists, this may be completely insignificant, but a person who doesn’t understand the science or the test may interpret that as ‘1 in 1000 people will die from eating GM food’. This could then be expanded to say that, ‘if 1 in 1000 people died, and every person ate GM food, then because there are 6,868,900,000 people in the world, 6,868,900 people will die.’ As you can see, things can easily get out of hand.

The next level is the information that comes from interpreting the data. A lot of what you see in the media is this sort of information. A journalist has seen a scientific paper, or media release, that mentions some piece of information, so the journalist writes an article based on this. Again, this can be misinterpreted if the person doesn’t understand the science.

The final level is the knowledge that comes from combining sets of information. I believe this is the best place to start when trying to educate the public. For example, when trying to teach someone about DNA, you wouldn’t start by giving them raw data, or the interpretation of that raw data, you would give them the knowledge that has come from all of that. Once they understand that knowledge well enough, they may be able to understand the information; and once they can comfortably understand that information, they may be able to look at the raw data and make some sense of it.

So in answer to the questions at the start of the post, I believe the public needs to understand DNA and the basic process of genetic engineering. From there, they can better understand the risks and benefits (when presented fairly).