Nanohype

Nanohype refers to both the author's book, published in 2006, and to the general concept associated with how nanoscience and nanotechnology has been communicated to different sets of stakeholders.

David M. Berube authored the book and Prometheus Books was the publisher. Mike Roco wrote the foreward, and the project was funded in part by one of the first National Science Foundation (NSF) grants awarded to study the societal implications of nanotechnology. Its subtitle is The Truth Behind the Nanotechnology Buzz. It began as a work in science studies, but editors wanted a more encyclopedic book, which accounts for its extensive endnotes. The goal was to report the phenomenon of nanotechnology using the words of those reporting about it, making the workflow a challenge. As one reviewer stated: “This tedious topography is essential because it shows how any rigorous critical study must acknowledge that complex webs of alliances, organizational structures, and even personality dynamics affect the fate of science and technology. Nano-Hype provides a propadeutic for communication research about nanotechnology.” The book Nano-Hype has over 20 published reviews—only four were negative.

On another level, nanohype refers to the speculation and wide-eyed exuberance marshaled to advance nanotechnology. The first “hypologists” were a confluence of government spokespersons and industrialists who framed nanotechnology as the next industrial revolution. For most of these spokespersons, nanoscience represented a science that would move materials sciences to the next level. During the two terms of the George W. Bush administration, the rhetorical depiction of nanotechnology focused more on growth, employment, productivity, and competitiveness, with a powerful subtext of economic nationalism. Business and industry argued nanotechnology was a powerful driver and critical to advances in electronics, alternative energy, and medicine.

The next level involved researchers in nanoscience and related fields who lent their voices to the chorus of advocates. Here was an opportunity to garner government research money in the materials science, a set of fields that had traditionally fared poorer than colleagues in health and medicine when it came to government sponsored research. On yet another level, there is the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO), which defends the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) in the halls of Congress and to the media. The NNCO is a powerful proponent of nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Nanohype took an interesting turn as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), independent critics, and academics in toxicology and other fields speculated about the environmental and health implications of nanoparticles. Some early research suggested the size, surface area, shape, reactivity potential, etc., of some nanoparticles might be problematic. In response, the advocates tried to shift their story from nanoscience as revolutionary to nanoscience as evolutionary, the next step in science, and nothing to be feared, but the genie was out of the bottle. While naturally occurring nanoparticles might be nothing new, engineered nanoparticles remained suspicious.

[Page 488]As more research began to surface, NGOs and academics began to offer dire scenarios where the release of nanoparticles polluted the environment, risked human health and well-being in the workplace, and placed the public at risk from the application, inhalation, and ingestion of some nanoparticles. NGOs and academics employed speculation, exaggeration, and a host of rhetorical devices to make their claims compelling mirroring many of the techniques employed by early advocates.

...