When Fear Reveals Hope

The Hidden Wisdom in Public Concerns About Engineering Nature

By Mary O’Malley

Think of a painting of a black night sky. In the centre, left unpainted, is the outline of a tree. This is negative space, the artist’s trick of revealing an object through its absence. And according to researcher Dr Henry Dixson, it is exactly how we should read public anxiety about synthetic biology.

‘Rather than painting the tree, you shade around it, and the tree pops out,’ says Dr Dixson, from ANU and Western Sydney University. ‘You can think of public views, the negative discussions and the fears of everything going horribly wrong, as something like that. There is a latent and positive core within those concerns, if you take the time to develop it.’

Across focus groups in Australia, Dr Dixson found that public worries are windows into what people truly care about. Someone who fears genetic engineering might “poison the food supply” is not simply afraid. ‘They have an underlying reverence for nature. They care about other people. They want to be healthy,’ he explains. Intrinsic values —the positive hopes, priorities, even visions — can be revealed through the negative.

Dr Dixson believes this tendency runs deep, not just in individuals but throughout human history. ‘I think a major concern of people through many tens of thousands of years has been, ‘how do I make peace with very powerful, complicated, unknown forces that ultimately have their way?’, he says. ‘We remember what might hurt us. Psychologists call it negativity bias. But it can’t all be negative. There must be a way of converting the pain of existence into something good and meaningful’. He argues that, ultimately, this is done through ritual and story, not science.

To explore how this plays out in synthetic biology, he conducted three separate national focus group studies in Australia and analysed another from New Zealand. In one such study, he presented four examples: plastic-eating enzymes, colour-gene-edited cotton, synthetic milk and gene-drive rabbits which would lead to wiping out the feral population. Plastic-eating enzymes were received with enthusiasm alongside concerns of lab-leaks, while colour-gene-edited cotton was described as safer, but less urgent. SynBio milk made through precision fermentation generated mixed reactions. Gene-drive rabbits were highly polarising. All involve genetic engineering, so what were people actually responding to?

‘Cotton is something that goes on my body rather than in my body,’ Dr Dixson says, describing how participants made fine distinctions. Plastic-eating enzymes carried a double benefit: they addressed pollution and required no ingestion. Cotton felt familiar. Synthetic milk felt uncanny. Gene drive animals pulled people into two camps: strongly pro or strongly anti. This kind of reaction is less typical.

Rarely, he says, can responses be categorised as simple support or opposition. Most people show subtle judgments about necessity, containment, personal autonomy and our relationships to nature and technologies. Rather than asking whether synthetic biology is good or bad,they were asking which applications, for what purposes, and under what conditions.

One of his analyses revealed two thematic networks that captured this complexity. “Tragic Flaws” represented everything in discussions that was unappealing or undesirable. Unforeseen consequences, vulnerability to exploitation, the hubris of thinking we can control nature. Its counterpart, “Practical Wisdom,” gathered the pragmatic ways synthetic biology might solve real problems and improve existing systems. The two themes sit side-by-side in the same conversations, sometimes in the same sentence.

So what advice does he offer synthetic biology start-ups and others working with diverse publics? ‘The public is more sophisticated than many often think. Decide that the public are stupid or irrational,’ Dr Dixson warns, ‘and you miss the point entirely.’

‘You might not share a worldview, or even agree on something that is scientifically well established. But there are other ways to bring people on board.’

This interest in worldviews underpins much of Dr Dixson’s work and personal philosophy. ‘I have always been interested in different cultures and different ways of seeing,’ he says. ‘I do not like dismissing public concerns about science. I really don’t. I want to understand where people are coming from.’

There is no single message that works for everyone. Someone unmoved by climate framing might respond to health, or to economic opportunity, or simply to the idea that the science is interesting. He even found participants who doubted that carbon dioxide drives climate change yet still saw value in carbon-capture technologies built with synthetic biology. ‘I was a bit surprised by that.’

He believes people’s concerns are often concerns about change itself. ‘Why would people not be uneasy with modernity?’ Dr Dixson asks. ‘We are not really built for these times.’

This unease with rapid change, with forces beyond our control, is not irrational in the pejorative sense. It is a deep and ancient driver behind what we call public opinion.

If we pay attention, the negative talk around genetic engineering, and modern life overall, reveals more than fear. People are trying to hold onto connection, stability, autonomy, and meaning. These are some of the things that must not change. They also reveal a desire for healthy, flourishing life for present and future generations.

The tree was there all along. We just need to look more carefully at the canvas.