Celebrating 30 years of curiosity

COMMENT

by Jackie Gorman

Science Week celebrates 30 years this year. As Ireland’s national celebration of science and its role in society, this national week has grown in both reach and impact. I have been working in science communications for almost 20 years, and it seems like a good time to reflect on this key week and the wider impact of science outreach in society.

Over the years, Science Week in Ireland has grown from a small pilot to a national initiative. It is managed by Research Ireland as a week-long celebration of science, enhancing the public’s interest in science and the linked disciplines of technology, engineering and maths [STEM] and enabling the public to see the relevance of such topics to their daily lives.

Usually when people talk about engaging more people with science, the most important focus is about jobs and skills and the economy. This remains a key issue of course but recent years have seen the emergence of another strong awareness of the need to engage more people with science, even if they choose not to study science or work in science. This is vital as more decisions we make everyday demand sort kind of discernment around information which is dependent on science. Everything from climate change to health to social media involves science and we all have informed decisions to make. So, it’s important to ask for evidence and be able to evaluate such evidence with a level of confidence.

When Science Week started in 1995, I was 24 years old and had been working for three years for a community enterprise group in West Offaly and I was not aware of Science Week. A few years after that, I was working in West Africa, and I certainly wasn’t aware of Science Week, but I was becoming more aware of the value of science to our lives. From recovering from a bad bout of malaria to seeing the impact clean drinking water made on communities to the benefit of polio vaccines and the value of biodiversity conservation in the jungles of the Gambia, science had a key role to play. Looking back, I think this time was a key turning point for me in terms of understanding the world and the vital role of science plays in everything from health issues to environmental conservation.

I’d like to say that my life and career is coming from a clear plan, but I’ve never been a person with a clear trajectory, as I have a lot more squiggly lines because my starting point is always curiosity. This is what has brought me to an almost 20-year career in science communications because it’s a discipline which itself is driven by curiosity. It’s given me the opportunity do all sorts of things and meet some amazing people – from the Doctor who eradicated Smallpox to the Producer of Sesame Street to a Formula 1 race car engineer. There is never a normal day in the office.

From small and curious beginnings Science Week has grown into a large national celebration with festivals and events across the country. For the past 12 years in the Midlands, I’ve had the honour of curating the Midlands Science Festival across Laois, Offaly, Longford, and Westmeath. We’ve covered everything from astronomy to zoology and some highlights stand out. These include from “Wolf to Woof” where we explored the evolution of dogs with some dogs attending and we’ve held events exploring music, the menopause, and a perennial Irish favourite, the weather! The most important thing to communicate to people is that science is for everyone and it is part of everyday life, it can benefit you in decisions you make and there’s always something new to learn. Science is always researching and providing new information to benefit our lives. Only in the past few weeks have researchers confirmed that HRT has a strong role to play in preventing dementia. This follows on from work done by the University of Galway using data collected from a 77-year longitudinal study. I wouldn’t have been at all interested in this news story 30 years ago, but I certainly am interested now.

I’ve experienced so many things over the past 30 years where science or understanding science have played a key role and it’s all being a positive role. Learning new languages, physiotherapy after a back injury, learning to code, embracing middle age and HRT, valuing biodiversity in my garden, learning to make kombucha and loving swimming in ice cold waters. This is just a brief list, but it makes me appreciate there is nothing in life where science can’t help us to understand more and do more.

Nowadays, there is sometimes a rift between those in science and the humanities, but I don’t see or value this division. I think of Leonardo da Vinci painting the Sistine Chapel and designing airplanes or of the beautiful words science has given us, particularly for plants and animals. It’s a way of seeing the world, not the only one but one with unique rigour and insight, bringing strange new words to the poet or a new perspective to the painter.

Science and Science Week is for everyone, and science outreach itself has become acutely aware that not everyone engages in the same way and that science needs to meet people where they are. This awareness has led to a welcome focus in science outreach on more inclusive and enabling approaches and in my work, this has been evident in everything from provision of sensory sessions to design choices in printed material to working with special interest groups. Inclusion benefits everyone and I often think of the words of the great palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould. He said: “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

We should consider this; there is no limit to talent but there are still limits to opportunity and science can help us level the playing field. So, I’d encourage everyone no matter their previous experience of science to engage with Science Week this year as there’s so many great events and activities waiting for you.

Jackie Gorman works for Midlands Science. She received the Research Ireland Outstanding Contribution to STEM Communications in Ireland Award in 2022.