When the Cambridge (Massachusetts) City Council met on January 5, 1977, there were klieg lights, TV cameras, and scores of newspaper reporters. This was no ordinary meeting; it was when Dan Hayes would present the report of the Cambridge Experimentation Review Board – a citizens' panel charged with reviewing the risks of recombinant DNA research, of which he was chairman. Not only would the panel's report determine the future of genetic engineering at two of the world's leading universities, it would also reveal how well a group composed entirely of nonscientists had been able to deal with a complex and highly charged scientific controversy. Such a twist in science policymaking was as unprecedented as the research itself.

The citizens' panel had been appointed by the Cambridge city manager the previous summer, at the height of public alarm about potential hazards of the research. Its seven members were carefully chosen to be broadly representative but, in order to avoid “scientific elitism,” included no practicing scientists. Chairman Hayes ran an oil distribution company in North Cambridge, and the other members included a nurse, two physicians, a nun, a community activist, an engineer, and a professor of urban and environmental policy. Most of the members knew nothing at all about genetic engineering when they began meeting in August, so their sessions were a combination of inquiry and crash course in molecular biology.