The format is simple: an expert comes in with a theory (e.g. someone has already been born who will live to age 1000) and discusses it with a panel made up of comedian Andy Hamilton along with Reginald D Hunter and Clare Balding.

Comedy is an important ingredient in the discussion, but the underlying science is serious and the panel tackles issues like the impact of the developments on society etc.

It’s not the first time I had seen the programme, but seeing it again struck me that comedy is probably an underused tool in science communication.

Then last night I went to see Ricky Gervais at the O2 in Dublin. The title of his tour is ‘Science’ so I thought perhaps this might add meat to the bones of this idea. Unfortunately there wasn’t much science in the show (apart from a ‘castle lab’ setting, a bit about the atomic bomb and a funny rational dissection of Noah’s Ark) so perhaps there’s an opportunity lost there.

Meanwhile the Simon Singh libel case in Britain has recently opened up more discussion about scientific evidence and medical treatments and some comedians have been wading in.

That debate comes across as highly polarised in that context, but perhaps on a wider level there’s room for more scientific comedy to build up a cultural understanding of science, its capabilities, impact and limitations.

Has anyone got more examples of science and comedy as bedfellows?

I’m not quite sure what I expected from it, but having grown up watching Fox on the screen in Family Ties, Back to the Future and Spin City I was curious.

What I got was much more than I bargained for.

Fox tells of his diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease nearly two decades ago at age 30 and how its progression has affected his life both at work and home.

The narration is particularly poignant when his voice slurs slightly – another reminder of his condition and of the challenge in getting the medication dose spot on to manage symptoms on a day-to-day basis.

But more striking is his unswerving optimism, humour, and dignity in the face of Parkinson’s.

“For everything this disease has taken, something with greater value has been given,” narrates Fox, whose Foundation has to date put almost $176 (€131) million into researching the condition.

“It may be one step forward and two steps back, but after a time with Parkinson’s, I’ve learned that what is important is making that one step count; always looking up.”

Fox has just brought out a new book in the US about life lessons learned – I look forward to looking it up.

I will always be grateful to these people, even though many of them have by now probably forgotten even giving me the piece of advice that made a difference or sending the encouraging email that helped me keep going.

Then there were the sneers. The ones who, when they heard I was starting out, or that I was scouting out a project that may or may not be published, basically hung up. Of course I could have lied and said I was someone I wasn’t, with experience I didn’t have and that a commission was set in stone when it was really far more nebulous. But I was always upfront with people when asking them to be involved in articles or other projects.

Most were happy to help but I recall one female communications official from a large multi-national who effectively dismissed me when I asked if her company could help with a project I was developing.

Funnily enough, when I started getting regular gigs with the national papers I never once went to her when I could have used a quote from someone in her company. I went to competitors instead. And whenever that company came to me looking for media exposure I was quite frankly reluctant to engage with them.

Petty grudge? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that I think that kind of response is the product of a corporate culture that stinks.

These days I’m getting emails from science communication students or those looking to enter the field. I think it’s wonderful that so many are showing an interest in the area and I try and support them when I can.

Be nice to the newbies, because your response might help them at an important time. And you never know how they may help you in years to come.

As ever, family and work are the primary beneficiaries of the 24 hours I’m allotted each day, but that’s not to say musings don’t hit that could easily provide fodder for pieces here.

Also, now that I’m doing more columns for the paper (officially 3 per week, unofficially 4) I’m taken off in new directions, with ever more avenues opening up.

I’ll post something coherent soon, promise

Something has been bothering me enormously, and when I went to research it on the Internet I found a swathe of sites scaremongering and delivering half-truths and assumptions.

When I spoke to people who actually know about the issue, I was somewhat reassured. But even at that, looking into it has left me baffled as to how things we take for granted as safe are regulated (or not).

I guess recently my faith in many things has been undermined. Yeah sure I could write an article about it, but I won’t for now. I’m too angry about it to be objective, so I’d only be adding to the fear factor that already abounds.

It also got me thinking about the online environment in general. I was always an e-mail junkie, even back in the early days. I still am. With email it’s personal, it’s private, it’s generally invited.

But ever since getting more into the world of blogs and social media sites (particularly the ones where your entries are visible to all) it has flagged to me a murky side of interaction that, if I let it, could undermine my usual assumption that people are good at heart.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of online contributors whose opinions I appreciate and respect (even if I don’t agree with them all).

But why do some people feel the anonymous and removed nature of talking to people through a keyboard gives them free reign to be rude or spread unverified information like manure for people’s deepest fears?

Maybe some of those people would do the same face to face. In which case I’d walk away.

But instead I just have to shut down and hope real life is better.

Then whump, I get one extra commission fired into me over the weekend at the last minute and the whole thing falls apart. Like it had only ever been held together by sticky tape. And not the wide stuff either.

So it’s back to rocketing stress levels, juggling on all sides and deadlines rearing up at me in rapid succession like some blasted computer game I can’t turn off just yet.

Still, at least I know once this accordion squeeze has finished (probably mid-week) that I will once again have protected time when the kids are happily being educated and entertained out of the house and I can try and restore some equilibrium.

That’s the good thing about chaos – given the chance the system is likely to right itself eventually.

The final article appeared in today’s Irish Times, but space limitations means some projects/comments got edited out. So here’s pretty much what I filed – edited to make it web appropriate:

It has become something of an institution. Each January, students from around the country pack up the fruits of several months’ labour and trek to the RDS for the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. Currently sponsored by BT, this year’s final showcased over 500 projects.
But what did the budding boffins make of the event? Top marks for atmosphere, mixed views on the food, and the must-have souvenir (apart from a prize) was a yoyo.

Declan Gardiner, Co. Kildare

Our whole class did a project on rocks, erosion and mountains. It was our teacher’s idea to do that. For our experiments we tested if rocks were permeable or non-permeable by putting a drop of water on each of them – if the water soaked in they were permeable and if it didn’t they were non-permeable.
We made our own rocks too with flour, salt, water, pebbles and food dye. We put them together and left them for about three weeks and they got really hard – you can hit them off the table and they won’t break.
My mum is a geologist, so she told me about some of the things we were doing, and the project has made me wonder a bit more about landscapes now, what kind of mountain it is, what kind of rock. I think I’ll be doing science in secondary school.

*****

Jack Carolan (with Sinéad Cornyn), Co. Meath

Our project is on the applications of mushroom waste as a potential bioresource.
Mushrooms are grown on a special compost but once you have grown about three flushes of mushrooms it becomes useless and it is landfilled. We recycled the compost by composting it again and we got a compost accelerator for growing vegetables. We made briquettes from the compost to see if you could burn them and we are also looking into bioethanol – maybe in a few years you could be running cars on mushroom waste.
We want to keep the project going, and the company that helped us with the compost has offered us work experience.
The social aspect is the best thing here – today I barely saw any of the other exhibits, I was talking to people at stands near me. I’ll have to get around to see the others now.

*****

Donal Naylor, Dublin

My project was on the invasive plant Gunnera tinctoria (giant rhubarb). I got the idea because my parents have a holiday home on Achill Island, and I saw how Gunnera had spread there. It’s spread by birds, animals and through human activity like improper disposal.
I tried to grow Gunnera, I had 59 different pots with five seeds in each pot, but none of them grew because it was the wrong time of the year.
But I found out all I needed to know through meeting people who work on Gunnera. In summer on Clare Island they are spraying glyphosate, a chemical that kills Gunnera, and I might be doing it as well.
The stands at the exhibition and the vouchers for the food are good – they have fish and chips and nice healthy options too.

*****

Natalie Sloyan and Sarah Lenehan (with Mary Horan), Co. Mayo

Natalie: Our project is basically about the long-term damage of wearing killer heels.
It’s really painful to wear heels and they have short-term effects like blisters and then long-term effects like back pain and it shortens your Achilles tendons.
We are interested in fashion so we researched Victoria Beckham because she is always wearing heels. We looked at magazines and the Internet, and we sent around a questionnaire about what shoes people wear. They all experienced discomfort in heels and less than a quarter of people were aware of the problems.
It has made us more interested in science. Meeting everyone and seeing all their projects has been the best thing.
Sarah: You think it’s going to be nerdy but then you get here and people have done projects on normal things.

*****

Erica De Capitani and Sarah Collins, Limerick

Erica: We were trying to find out why bubbles were spherical and what’s the best bubble mixture. We found that glycerine helps a lot, it makes them bigger and last a lot longer because it stops them evaporating
Sarah: We got the idea from my cousin’s experiment book, he’s seven. We made different solutions using water and washing up liquids and oils like linseed, vegetable and olive oil.
We have been around the exhibition a couple of times. We liked the project on blondes, brunettes and redheads and the stereotypes.
There are table quizzes and you get a voucher in your goodie bag to go ice skating. We were too tired to go to the disco though, we had been up since 5.30 in the morning to get here. And we didn’t get yoyos, there was a big queue.

*****

John Forde, James O’Leary and Eoin Maher, Kilkenny

John: We made a jacket with ‘ultrasonic eyes’ to help blind people. It has four sensors on it and if you are walking towards something the sensor starts to vibrate harder, then if you walk back it turns off a bit.
We got the parts on the Internet and it took two months to put together. Eoin’s Dad is an electrician. We were going to do a backpack but we couldn’t fit all the sensors on so we put it in a jacket.
At the exhibition a man got his son to wear it, close his eyes and walk around, and when he was walking towards a wall it started to vibrate so he turned back.
James: The best thing is meeting people here. We went to the disco last night, we are danced out.

*****

Grainne Ní Lorcain, Cara Ní Dhuinn, Aoife Ní Bhuachalla, Dublin

Grainne: We were interested in psychology and we wanted to find out why people’s personalities develop in different ways, so we did surveys in our school and asked people’s birth order in their family, do you prefer to be busy, how do you relax.
I’m a middle child and I completely fit the stereotype of competitive with the older sibling and confident.
Cara: I’m a youngest child and I’m creative, I did all the art to go with our project.
Aoife: Our project looked at ratios in music. In the exhibition the food is so expensive – we get special vouchers but you have to pay on top of it. And there’s a complete lack of bins.
But the best thing is being able to walk up to people and ask them about their project. It’s a gathering of people around our age and that doesn’t happen very often.
And the yoyos, there’s a big obsession with those. You get them free if you do games and almost everyone has one now.

*****

Katie Kierans (with Kellie McGuirk and Lauren Healy), Drogheda

We were brainstorming ideas in Kellie’s sitting room and her dog was there. We were flicking through the channels and we noticed the dog responded to different kinds of music that came on. We thought it was a bit weird, so we surveyed 150 dogs in their homes.
We made a mix tape and played it at 60 decibels, so it would always be the same. Classical music has a calming effect on dogs, they become serene and lie down, pop music has no effect, indoor dogs are used to it. And generally no dogs like heavy metal.
The atmosphere here is really friendly and nice. And before we wouldn’t have necessarily picked science subjects but now we all will.

*****

Liam Duffy and Edward Hanlon, Co. Mayo

Edward: My mum knitted our mascot, Senor Alan. He’s a donkey because we looked at whether it’s better to motivate with a carrot or a stick.
We asked students to run over a basketball course, then told them if they could beat their time they would get a reward, then on the third run we said if they didn’t beat their time they would be punished.
The boys reacted slightly more to the punishment, and 73 per cent of the girls improved in reaction to the reward.
Liam: Because the snow closed the school, our teacher got the community centre opened for us so we could put the project together at the end.
Edward: The worst thing was getting up at 4am to come here and getting across the icy roads to get to the train station. But it’s brilliant, we will definitely come back next year, even if our project doesn’t get through.

*****

Tunde Toki, Bola Adeniran, Dublin

Tunde: Our project was to compile, analyse and compare the physical and emotional effects of romantic relationships on students in secondary school.
We did a general survey, a relationship survey and we talked to a guidance counsellor.
Bola: We found that 62 per cent had been in a relationship for over six months, 52 per cent of people would skip homework to be with their partner, 93 per cent think regularly about their partners during class and 73 per cent text their partners during class.
Tunde: Our conclusions were that romantic relationships have adverse physical effects in a school setting, people feeling tired, less focused in class.
The exhibition is a great experience for us. We never thought it would be like this. Our friends said before it was great craic and we found out it really is, we are really enjoying it.

*****

Kate Nevin, Dublin

The whole class did a project on slime. We used paperclips as an example of a molecule, and when they all gather together it’s called a polymer.
They used to be called polymolecules but we don’t call them that any more.
When all the molecules join up into the polymers it forms a little bit of slime, but then they get tangled up and that forms a lot of slime. Some of the slime is bouncy, some is stretchy, some is sticky.
We got the idea because we did it once for Hallowe’en and it was a really cool experiment so we decided to do it for here as well. It’s pretty easy to make.

Ends

In the ‘bacon’ one, a study in North Carolina looked at the effects of choline on brain development in the womb. Choline has long been known to be involved in brain function, and this study, published in FASEB Journal, fed the nutrient to pregnant mice and looked at nerves in their offspring. The pups of mice that were not fed choline showed some changes in DNA-protein complexes and nerve cells from the memory region of their brains divided less when grown in the lab.

Bacon and eggs contain choline.

So what do some newspapers do? Claim that having good old fry up when you are expecting will turn junior into a genius. Don’t you just marvel at that giddy leap they do from fact to wild supposition?

Here’s what the NHS says, it’s far more sober but a smidge closer to the truth methinks:

“It is tenuous to use the results of this complex laboratory study in mice to claim that these foods boost intelligence in human offspring. While the newspapers have mentioned that this study was in mice none of them mentions the fact that this research did not feature any form of intelligence or memory test on the mice.”

And now for another fry up. This time it’s your brain.

A US study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease found that mice exposed to electromagnetic radiation for months (which is a long time in mouseland) appeared to be protected from the pathology and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Not that mice actually get the disease, but they used a model that was susceptible to forming the brain plaques seen in large numbers in humans with the condition, and they tested memory in regular mice too.

It’s a surprising finding, and the researchers reckon it could in part be down to the radiation stimulating bloodflow in brain regions. But does it really apply to humans?

For now I’ll just use the mobile as normal, keep reading and writing and trying to exercise more.

Maybe I’m pedantic, but those descriptions and others of their ilk glare out of pages at me as menacingly as bad grammar or typos.

Indeed people who have cancer can and do suffer. But unless that person has actually told the reporter that they are/were suffering is it OK to state it on their behalf? I don’t think so.

People who develop multiple sclerosis or any other chronic, degenerative condition do indeed have hurdles to contend with, but are they automatically “victims”?

And how unhelpful is it to characterise a person by one facet of their health such as asthma, schizophrenia, depression… surely it only adds to any existing stigma and prejudice associated with particular health issues by allowing those issues to publicly define the people who live with them.

As for calling everyone with an illness a patient – unless the person is in hospital that term is surely superfluous?

If you are rolling your eyes to heaven now and thinking “doesn’t she have more to do with her time than stress over this kind of stuff”, I didn’t notice this kind of stuff until I started reporting on health and I spoke with charities and groups that promote accurate awareness of medical conditions and try to remove stigma. Until then, such terms just rolled into my subconscious and probably helped to paint particular images of diseases in my mind.

Choosing the appropriate words can help build understanding. Otherwise you are going for cheap sensationalism, you are not stopping to think about the person or you are just being plain sloppy. Grrrr.

The best science communication in my opinion is the stuff that flies in under the radar. So rather than saying ‘hurray, scientist X did Y’ – which is likely to send readers to Zzzzz  unless they know scientist X or work on Y – you can neatly fold scientific information into a story that talks to readers, much like getting the air into the souffle, or blending the veg in the pasta sauce so younger diners won’t pick it out.

I reckon this is an important factor for Ireland, where science is not yet really in our public lexicon or our unconscious understanding as a society. After all, we only really got serious about science funding here 10-15 years ago, which is a blink of an eye.

So while focused outlets for science stories are still vital, we need to blend more science into the everyday, to stop yelling about it and making it a Big Thing and instead whizz it like the hidden veg in the pasta sauce for kids, the lady speaketh sense.