My long happy career as a science columnist with The Irish Times

Today’s offering is my last regular science column for The Irish Times, 31 years after my first column appeared in 1995.

I like to believe The Irish Times’ initiative in taking on my column then, and soon afterwards expanding its overall science coverage to a weekly science page, launched the modern era of Irish Stem [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] communication.

I wasn’t the first IT science columnist. Roy Johnston wrote a column from 1970 to 1976. His well-written columns were rigorously analytical, often through a Marxist lens and probably directed more at a scientific readership. On the other hand, I aimed to familiarise everybody with science in this technological age and, so, I always directed my column at the wider general public.

The nuclear explosion at Chernobyl on April 26th, 1986, sparked my career in science journalism. This explosion released a cloud of radioactive material into the atmosphere, where it was blown around by the prevailing winds and washed back (“fallout”) to Earth by rainfall.

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On May 3rd 1986, this radioactive cloud reached Ireland. In addition to my academic duties, I was also radiation protection officer at UCC and the then Cork Examiner newspaper asked me to write articles explaining the situation to the public.

I wrote several articles and, together with Prof Jim Heffron of UCC, measured radioactive fallout in drinking water and milk. We reassured the public that the very low contamination of water/foodstuffs posed little or no public health hazard.

Noting that no Irish newspaper then carried regular science coverage, I began writing a fortnightly science column for the Examiner in 1987. I ceased writing my column in 1994 and approached The Irish Times. Editor Conor Brady took me on as a weekly science columnist, starting in January 1995 and reporting to Gerry Smyth.

My first IT column appeared on January 2nd, 1995 – “Radon, the silent natural menace”. Thankfully, the column was popular from the beginning and, after a year, science coverage was expanded to an entire page weekly, incorporating my column.

The Irish Times also began to involve itself at that time with other aspects of Irish science, for example, sponsoring a public lecture by Richard Dawkins in the RDS Concert Hall in 1995 when he visited Dublin to publicise his book River out of Eden (Weidenfeld and Nicolson). I chaired the post-lecture discussion. I remember Dawkins nervously made a remark about negative Catholic attitudes and was quite taken aback when the audience responded with applause.

After a few years, I put together a collection of my columns, grouped under different themes, liaising on the project with Brenda McNiff, publishing editor of Irish Times Books. The book, Science Today – Understanding the Natural World (1999), was launched by then minister for science Noel Treacy in the Natural History Museum. It sold well.

I later composed a wall poster presenting famous Irish scientists, sponsored by Barry’s Tea and designed by The Irish Times. It was distributed with the paper on January 22nd, 2008, and sent separately to all secondary schools.

My column attracted frequent letters to the editor, occasionally sparking heated debates on topical and emotional subjects such as the origin of individual human life, the ethics of abortion and embryonic stem cell research and the precipitous decline of births, below replacement rates, in the developed world.

I am proud to have been part of a great Irish liberal institution, working under two science editors during that time: Dick Ahlstrom and Kevin O’Sullivan. Both were very encouraging of my efforts and a pleasure to work with.

Before 1995, science promotion in Ireland was pretty much limited to the annual Young Scientists Exhibition at the RDS. But today we have a profusion of radio/TV science programming and books aimed at younger and older people alike.

The weekly science page (now renamed the Science and Climate page) played a leading part in encouraging this great surge in popular interest in science in Ireland over the past 30 years.

I feel sad today as I lay down my columnist’s pen. Writing my Irish Times column has been a huge part of my life and I will miss it, particularly the regular communications from readers. However, I don’t plan to retire entirely from science communication and, so, you may hear from me occasionally yet again.