When a research council in the UK consulted the public about different aspects of nanomedicine, the feedback was loud and clear, as Richard Jones reports for Nature Nanotechnology (3, 578 – 579; 2008). “Given the breadth, and the diffuseness, of nanotechnology as a field, and the wide range of potential impacts it might have, it has sometimes been difficult to maintain a focus and to find issues that people can get a purchase on, with the result that the recommendations can end up seeming, to some, disappointingly generic. In any case, the complex and decentralized nature of scientific decision-making sometimes makes it difficult to see how these deliberations actually make a concrete difference on policy. The results of a new public engagement exercise on the subject of nanotechnology for healthcare, carried out in the UK, directly address some of these criticisms and offer surprising and enlightening insights into potential public reactions to some of the predicted applications of nanotechnology in medicine”.

But, asks Richard Jones, “what about broader worries concerning tensions between the involvement of the public in decision-making in science policy and the principle of the autonomy of the scientific enterprise? One answer, of course, is that it is right in principle that the public has a voice in the direction of an activity that involves considerable amounts of taxpayers’ money, and that these exercises may help provide some public legitimacy for potentially controversial areas of science. The more provocative suggestion is that in an applied field like nanomedicine, taking the results of public engagement seriously may lead to significantly better decision-making. This is the proposition that now needs testing.”