Team:Hong Kong HKUST/Public education/Event:Science Park
Aim
- Investigate public’s opinions towards synthetic biology
- Educate basic biology to kids
Description
We arranged workshops on DNA models and DNA extraction in the “Summer Science Party 2017” organized by the Hong Kong Science Park.
Achievement
Although the target audience are children from 4 to 12, we were able to receive feedbacks from parents regarding to their understanding of synthetic biology and genetically modified organisms.
There are 79 parents doing surveys. Out of them, 58% claimed to have knowledge about GMOs. Not only they 63% know that the gene inside organism is changed, equal percent also viewed that GMOs greatly affects ecosystem followed by 54% who voiced GMO negatively affect human health (put charts/ data)
Whereas actually there is no valid proof that GM food is harmful to human health. The misconceptions that GM food is harmful is possibly due to research bias or rumours. This could be a major barrier to the development of synthetic biology.
From this science park event, we got a number of facebook followers, majority are participants from the event. We continued to write a short article sharing knowledge about synthetic biology from the small group of facebook followers to a larger group of public, hoping people can engage with scientific world with more thoughtful point of view.
