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Expert opinion on nanotechnology: risks, benefits, and regulation

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Abstract

A survey of American (US) nanotechnology researchers (N = 177) suggests a diversity of views about what areas are most important to the burgeoning field, as well as perceptions about the overall benefits and risks of such research. On average, respondents saw a range of technologies as key and viewed public health and environmental issues as areas where both risks and the need for regulation are greatest. These areas were also where respondents said current regulations were least adequate. Factor analyses of the survey questions suggest that, when considering both risks and regulations, respondents make a distinction between health and environmental risks, and what might be termed “social risks” (e.g., invasion of privacy, use of nanotechnology in weapons, and economic impacts).

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Notes

  1. The master list of journals included in this database can be found on the Thomson Scientific website (http://www.scientific.thomson.com/mjl/). The exclusion of those who have not recently been successful in obtaining funding for their work and/or in getting articles accepted in peer-reviewed journals is not an important limitation since the purpose of our study was to document the perspectives of active researchers, that is, those researchers whose work was identified and supported through peer review decisions. The limitations of peer review are an interesting topic in the sociology of science, although entirely outside the scope of this study.

  2. The limitation to US researchers was for several reasons. First, this project was part of a larger effort focused on US public opinion formation, and we wanted comparable data for the US scientific community. Second, we are unaware of any way to verify that the ISI database—while international in audience and scope—provides equivalent coverage of research done outside the US, which could have represented a significant distortion if we had used it to try to characterize the perspectives of non-US, as well as US, researchers.

  3. However, factor means for factors composed of different numbers of items cannot be directly compared, unless divided by the number of items included. Also, when combining variables, we did not weigh individual variables by their factor scores.

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Acknowledgments

This research is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0531160. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this study are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Correspondence to John C. Besley.

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Besley, J.C., Kramer, V.L. & Priest, S.H. Expert opinion on nanotechnology: risks, benefits, and regulation. J Nanopart Res 10, 549–558 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-007-9323-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-007-9323-6

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