“How do you say "Duh!” in French?

Il n’est pas facile!

Nanodot reports on a citizen conference consensus paper which concludes that understanding nanotechnology and evaluating the ethics of research on constructs and machines built on the molecular leve requires effort and may be too hard.

They didn’t know that nanotechnology existed until someone told them and then found that they had to work at understanding.

Last week, Science Daily told us about a similar study from a Pennsylvania professor who participated in a survey of people Vermont and New Zealand.

I’ll admit to a bit of worry that we’re all paying for the emperor’s clothes – we can’t see or measure it without the tools the researchers give us or until we – someday – see the effects.

How do we know what those little machines (like these little “ratchets”) are really doing down there?