University of Helsinki, Finland.
Public Underst Sci. 2021 Oct;30(7):913-926. doi: 10.1177/09636625211022648. Epub 2021 Jun 19.
Finnish biobanks have started to recruit children. The national supervising authority has emphasized the centrality of providing children with age-appropriate information. We analyzed one such campaign. We argue that by simplifying the complex socio-technical arrangements of biobanking with the introduction of a new metaphor-like concept, "Bio-me," the campaign presents a misleading and reductionist picture of data-driven biomedicine and biobank participation. First, the Bio-me character seems to bear similarities to the seventeenth-century explanations of embryological development. Second, the focus in the campaign is on biological material while crucial connections to different sorts of data are ignored. Third, we point to the absence of verbal references to genes and DNA, although the prevailing visualization comprises the double helix. We argue that the campaign has potential to contribute to public misunderstanding of science by introducing a new term that has little connection to actual biology or scientific practices it tries to promote.
芬兰生物银行已开始招募儿童。国家监督机构强调为儿童提供适龄信息的重要性。我们分析了这样一个活动。我们认为，该活动通过引入一个新的隐喻概念“Bio-me”来简化生物银行复杂的社会技术安排，从而对数据驱动的生物医学和生物库参与产生了误导和简化的图景。首先，Bio-me 这个角色似乎与 17 世纪胚胎发育的解释有相似之处。其次，活动的重点是生物材料，而忽略了与不同类型数据的关键联系。第三，我们指出虽然流行的可视化包括双螺旋结构，但没有提到基因和 DNA。我们认为，该活动有可能通过引入一个与实际生物学或试图推广的科学实践几乎没有联系的新术语，导致公众对科学产生误解。
