ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE PRIZE PRESENTATION CEREMONY AT UCD MERVILLE LAY SEMINARS
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE PRIZE PRESENTATION CEREMONY AT UCD MERVILLE LAY SEMINARS O’REILLY HALL, UCD
I am delighted to be with you today to present the prizes at the 3rd Merville Lay Seminars and I am particularly grateful to Professor Paul Engel for issuing this welcome invitation.
Science was once the preserve of gifted amateurs, often gentlemen of leisure like Robert Boyle, son of the Earl of Cork who explored some of the basic laws of physics, or people with a daytime job to support their hobby like John Dalton, the Manchester schoolmaster, who developed the idea of valency which underpins our understanding of chemistry. Science has, of course, long since become a professional activity which takes years of training. It has also become a progressively more expensive activity, given the increasing sophistication of the instrumentation and materials used for much contemporary research. Scientists are therefore now expected to justify themselves, to explain what they want to do and why it is worth supporting, not only in terms that their fellow scientists can appreciate but also in ways that are accessible to the lay person.
There is a second reason for an increasing emphasis on communicating science to the public. In the past people have tended to assume that what the scientists got up to in their laboratories was at worst irrelevant but more hopefully might be of some long-term benefit. There is, however, an increasing realisation that many of the advances of science carry a cost if they are not carefully handled. Other advances raise ethical issues which need to be understood and weighed up by everyone - not just the scientists. One thinks of the issues surrounding the use of nuclear power, the overuse of pesticides and antibiotics, the new moral questions raised by genetic profiling, genetically modified food, the cloning of animals and so on. In fact lift any newspaper today and scientific issues underpin many of the headlines.
Some of these issues have the potential to raise public fears, perhaps even a backlash against science and technology, that the scientific community has a responsibility to address. There is always a question as to whether ethical considerations should be regulated by scientists or subject to outside control, by politicians and society as a whole. Scientists may argue that their focus should be on discovery, that it is a matter for society not scientists to draw up the acceptable limits of research. On the other hand, scientific discovery is increasingly so far ahead of ethical discussion on its implications, that by the time we as a society debate the issue or are sufficiently informed to analyse it intelligently, it may be too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
The key issue in any debate on the ethics and implications of developments in science, is that there should be clear and accurate information available in the public domain, so that informed decisions can be made. We are still some way from achieving this. The training of scientists is increasingly specialised, with a language that seems impenetrable, mysterious and forbidding to the uninitiated. I know this was an issue which exercised me greatly in another life as Pro Vice Chancellor at Queen’s University Belfast and led us to embark on a partnership with Dublin City University to deliver a Masters Degree in Science Communication. It was that same concern which led to these seminars – a concern that the public should be well informed and that those who inform should be good communicators.
It is essential that we in Ireland now start to train our young scientists to communicate clearly and comprehensibly with the general public. That is why the establishment of the Merville Lay Seminar Programme by the Departments of Biochemistry and Pharmacology at UCD is both welcome and timely. This is now the third year of the Programme and I am delighted to see that it is going from strength to strength.
A word about the two disciplines involved. Pharmacology and Biochemistry are two of the main disciplines underpinning the pharmaceutical industry, one of the most important sectors in Ireland’s manufacturing economy. Both Departments have a long and distinguished history within UCD and have occupied Merville House, the Georgian mansion which gives its name to the seminars, since UCD moved to Belfield in the 1960s. With continuing expansion and especially a growing research activity, they have now outgrown Merville, and UCD is currently embarking on a plan to re-house them in new purpose-built laboratories in the heart of the Belfield campus in what will become the Conway Institute. The hope is also that the new institute will be able to establish a strong working partnership with industry and that the inventiveness of young researchers such as those here today may keep the Irish pharmaceutical industry at the cutting edge in the new century. With the approach to their training that is reflected in the Merville Lay Seminars, there is also a strong expectation that we, the public, will have some idea of what they are all doing!
This is an extremely important initiative – one which I hope will be taken up by other universities and institutes. I would like to warmly commend all those who have been involved in the initiative, in particular, the Heads of Biochemistry and Pharmacology here at UCD, Professor Paul Engel and Professor Michael Ryan. My thanks also to our distinguished panel of judges, ably chaired by Minister of State Liz Mc Manus, who had the difficult task of deciding the winners.
Finally, and most especially, I would like to congratulate the six finalists who had the courage – and optimism – to address us here this evening. I wish all of you every success in your future careers as great scientists and even better communicators.