The Breakthrough Study: Understanding why people hope and fear breakthrough technologies
The study examines public attitudes toward breakthrough technologies across China, Germany, and the United States.
How Society Feels about Breakthrough Science: Decoding the 'why'
This new study, "How Society Feels about Breakthrough Science: Decoding the 'why'," explores the underlying reasons people hold specific hopes and fears about AI in healthcare, cell and gene therapies, cultivated meat, and new genomic techniques (NGTs) in agriculture.
Key findings reveal that people don't react to technology itself, but rather to what it represents in their lives. When discussing these innovations, participants expressed fundamental beliefs about control, naturalness, fairness, and humanity in an age of accelerated change.
The research identified three distinct mindsets (Optimists, Rationalists, and Skeptics) that shape reactions to breakthrough innovation. These emotional worldviews transcend age, education, and geography, with individuals moving between positions depending on the specific technology discussed.
The study also highlights that trust and knowledge deficits remain key challenges, though unfamiliarity doesn't always lead to rejection; often resulting in neutrality, particularly for NGTs and cultivated meat.
Discover what drives people’s opinions on these technologies and what it means for the future of these fields in the new report.
Technical Note
On behalf of Leaps by Bayer, Ipsos conducted 21 60-minute web-assisted in-depth interviews with adults aged 18+ in three countries:
• n=7 in the US
• n= 7 in Germany
• n= 7 in China
Fieldwork took place between 22nd September – 7th November 2025. Participants were recruited via online market research panels. The study aimed to explore the reasoning behind some of the key findings from a previous global online 30-minute quantitative survey (data available in How Society Feels About Breakthrough Science (2025)), focusing on understanding what factors drive hopes and fears toward breakthrough technologies.
Specifically, the interviews focused on four technologies:
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to advance medicine and health
• Cell and Gene Therapies (CGT)
• New Genomic Techniques (NGTs)
• Cultivated Meat
Topic definitions were used throughout the interview to avoid any bias due to misunderstanding of technical terms.
Firm quotas were set to recruit respondents across generations, with a focus on Gen Z (due to their ‘digital native’ status and research suggesting they have an outsized influence trends and media compared to other generations):
• n=4 Gen Z respondents (aged 18-27) per country
• n=1 Millennial respondent (aged 28-43) per country
• n=1 Gen X respondent (aged 44-57) per country
• n=1 Baby Boomer+ respondent (aged 58+) per country
Flexible quotas were also used to recruit respondents with varied opinions about the four breakthrough technologies and other topics of interest, e.g. trust in health authorities.
Authors and contributors to the report:
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Leaps by Bayer / Bayer:
André Guillaume, Dr. Jürgen Eckhardt, Karyn Riegel, Kira Peikoff, Nicholas Schleyer
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BCG
Dr. Friedemann Wolf, Dr. Torsten Kurth, Judith Wallenstein, Bianca Adolphs, Maximilian Münster, Sofia Torres Venegas
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Ipsos
Serena Urzi, Chloe Amor, Isabelle Rowan, Julia Nurse
