Although its contributions to science will be impressive, GEN-FISH was originally conceived as a project to design and develop tools to be used. This means that GEN-FISH will only be considered a success if the science is translated for actual use in the real world as broadly and widely as possible. For this reason, the social scientists on our team have worked closely with our end-users from the very beginning and will continue to do so throughout the program, using quantitative assessment tools to answer questions such as:
- How can we encourage people to adopt our genomics Toolkits?
- What barriers are there to adoption?
- Are there any potential ethical problems in using the Toolkits?
- Are these Toolkits a good fit with the organization’s goals?