As someone with training in both neuroscience and the law, it is maybe not surprising that I’m inclined to think (speculate, worry, etc.) about how current and future scientific and technological advances might affect society for good or bad. Luckily for me, as a fellow with the Stanford Program in Neuroscience and Society (SPINS) it’s also my job to think and write about these things, and so I do. I also read the work of many others—scientists, ethicists, lawyers, and journalists—who think and write about these issues.

But living and working in the microcosm I do, it’s easy to suffer from distorted perception—specifically, to make certain incorrect assumptions about how others process the topics I think about daily. I recognize that not everyone shares my position on a particular issue. But this recognition, in itself, overlooks a third option: that many simply may not care about the issue as much as I do. Or maybe even at all.

The point was driven home to me by a couple of recent findings. The first comes from a study by a U.K. group, published in Science Communication, that examined how the public at large thinks about neuroscience. Conclusion: they don’t think about it at all, because they believe it’s irrelevant. This, as the study points out, despite a spike in media coverage of brain research in the past few years.

The exception to this general finding was for people diagnosed with neurological or psychiatric disorders, who do pay attention to neuroscience research that might shed light on their conditions. But even for these people, the study found that neuroscience findings were used “flexibly and instrumentally, selectively marshaled when [it] serve[d] social and self-identity needs.”

The second finding comes from a poll conducted by NPR and Truven Health Analytics. In the age of electronic medical records and data theft, the poll asked people how concerned they are with the privacy of their medical information. Its main finding is summed up in the accompanying article by Larry Ponemon, a researcher who also studies data privacy: “People are just not worried about privacy [of their medical records]. They’re worried about other things.”

At least according to these two findings, then, it looks like the general public may not be too concerned with research findings and science/technology-and-society-type issues that I personally believe to be pretty important. So what does this mean for the academics, journalists, commentators, etc. who spend their time studying these issues and communicating their conclusions?  Are we wasting our time worrying and writing about things that the larger community just doesn’t care that much about?

Well, not necessarily. A closer look at the two findings I’ve discussed gives a hint as to why.

First, there’s the exception to the U.K. group’s general finding that the public believes neuroscience to be largely irrelevant. People do pay attention to this research when they have (or worry about having) a neurological or psychiatric disorder—in other words, when the world of neuroscience personally affects them. And they use the information they gain in ways that help them in their daily lives.

Likewise, though the NPR/Truven poll found that only 14% of respondents worry about the privacy of their hospital-held medical records, only 4.9% of respondents have ever been notified that their records have been compromised or accessed without their permission. Just as the participants in the U.K. study think about neuroscience only when it affects them personally, it is not surprising, given the lack of personal impact, that the majority of data-privacy poll respondents don’t spend much time thinking about the safety of their medical records. Gladly, they have no reason to—their cows are safely in their barns.

But just because a large-scale medical data breach hasn’t yet occurred doesn’t mean that it won’t occur. If it did, I would guess that the results of the NPR/Truven poll might be quite different. The guess is supported by the results of a survey published in the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics. Survey respondents had been asked for consent before their genetic data was submitted to a national database. Almost 70% of respondents reported that it was very important that they had been asked for this consent. If they had not been asked and later found out about the misuse, the issue of health-data privacy would likely assume a new and personal significance as individuals realized, too late, that their proverbial barns were empty.

And that’s where I believe the academics, journalists, and commentators come in. It is their job to worry, debate, and write about the potential negative consequences of scientific and technological advances before they happen. Ideally, this process will result in robust policies that will prevent the nastiest potential outcomes from ever occurring, or at least give us a well-thought-out path to mitigation if one of these outcomes does take place.

This preemptive approach might be particularly important given that, when the moment of crisis is upon us, the “experts” may be no more level-headed than the rest of us. One study found that when perceived risks are low, health care professionals’ attitudes towards vaccines reflect their training, but when risks are high, their attitudes, like those of the general public, reflect emotion and personal experience.  By thinking about and planning for possible concerns now, when most people don’t care, we may prevent a situation where people care so deeply that no one can think clearly.

In the meantime, SPINS and CLB will keep blogging.

* Thanks to Dmitry Karshtedt for bringing my attention to this Swedish proverb. There is a Russian version of the saying, but apparently (unlike Dostoyevsky) it does not translate well.