At a training session on June 10th, star Clare hurler Shane O’Donnell got a concussion. “It wasn’t even a knockout. I was still lucid. Though anyone that saw the impact said it looked quite bad. You’re basically in a state of, confusion is the best word, but it doesn’t accurately describe it. You understand immediate things around you, but you’re in a total fog. You can’t really think or process information at all.”
Four weeks on O’Donnell was still not sleeping well, spending the day “staring at the four walls of my sitting room. Anything more was too much. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t look at my phone. I couldn’t watch TV. I couldn’t even move my head and eyes at the same time quickly. I was in a trance-like state for weeks. I didn’t think an injury could be that bad. It was really scary. If I had a good day, it would be followed by multiple bad days, sometimes even worse than before.”
He was off work for six weeks and off the pitch for more than 10 weeks: “A really difficult summer.”
These days O’Donnell (27) is “100 per cent”, but his experience of the wider medical community was “they just they didn’t seem to fully get concussion, or didn’t understand how to address it”. He’s a microbiologist, but his experience provoked interest in sports science and concussion research, discovering knowledge that could have helped him, but which isn’t disseminated widely enough.
Just as O’Donnell’s experience as a coeliac influenced his PhD research, many researchers are drawn to areas of personal interest or experience. A big Irish project, Creating Our Future, aims to broaden that base, like a giant national brainstorm about what matters to us all, mining the citizenry for ideas about future research, to ultimately make Ireland a better place to live.
O’Donnell will pitch on concussion, but he’s also an ambassador (along with Prof Luke O’Neill and RTÉ presenter Emer O’Neill) for the Government-led campaign, which Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) is running.
Inviting research ideas from the public, says O’Donnell, “gives us a seriously powerful platform to learn more, because everyone’s experience drives the solutions they’re looking for”. It’s not just looking for science ideas, he stresses, but challenges from arts to sports.
“This is a really good time for that conversation with the public about research and what matters to them,” says Dr Ruth Freeman, SFI’s director of strategy and communications. “As a scientist, the last 18 months has been really unusual. Our language around science and research is suddenly in the public domain.”
Suggestions have flown in since summer, 5,000 of them so far, online, on postcards and through SFI outreach events. Next week’s Science Week centres on it, with more nationwide roadshows visiting communities before the Creating Our Future project ends on November 30th.
A random look at some of the specific ideas gives a snapshot of what we care about right now. The largest number of ideas are about health and wellbeing. One suggests more research into women’s health, “given how neglected this is globally and in Ireland. It would be quite the trailblazer approach to set up a focused research group on women’s health: endometriosis, maternal healthcare, pregnancy and birth, breast cancer, menopause, etc.”
Climate and environment attract the second most suggestions. Surrounded by Cop26 concerns, what is the effect of “so much eco-anxiety” on our psyche, says one, while others suggest researching rainwater to generate energy, or how to secure public water: “We should not have summer shortages here in Ireland.”
Freeman says others “come down to how we use our land and marine resources. That’s a challenging conversation, because there’s often competing demands.”
One suggestion calls for research into economic, societal and regional benefits of a fishing community such as Killybegs.
Another pitches on “the benefits of transitioning our fishing fleet to ocean-based tourism. Fishing is not sustainable in the long term so communities would be better served” by eco-tourism such as kayaking, surfing, diving, sea swimming, aquariums and sailing. “Investment in local beach changing facilities would boost the economy on the west coast”, encouraging home holidays.
Others focus on rural working hubs, enhancing local schools with fibre broadband, or tax incentives to attract international relocations.
Prioritisation
But after all this, with what could be 10,000 ideas, what do you do? Committees of experts will look at all of them, categorising and prioritising. While some will inform research (or use of existing research), they’ll all go into a widely accessible book of inspiration, a resource for academia and research institutions, and also informing Government’s upcoming science and innovation policy.
Some “savvy companies will be interested too, for commercial opportunities hidden in this report”, such as suggestions for finding alternatives to synthetic fabrics, and how to change consumer opinion on fast fashion.
Others may be applicable to existing research areas. “For example, I might be a material scientist, but have never thought about how fabrics come under particular strain in wheelchairs”; this is on foot of another suggestion from a wheelchair user.
Freeman says Ireland doesn’t invest a lot in research, “partly because it’s invisible. And often the doorstep issues are the things people are facing immediately. It’s a good time now to think, how will we make decisions today about how we want to live in the future?”
Creating Our Future follows similar campaigns in New Zealand and the Netherlands, and is modelled on a Flemish project. Their books of inspiration for policymakers and researchers, collating the concerns of their populations, were useful in prioritising research funding, Freeman says.
While research “can seem remote for a lot of people”, SFI’s campaign aims to make it accessible, and create opportunities to talk to researchers about subjects from the potential of AI, to more sustainable lives.
“People are quite excited about the potential. But as a public we can choose how we want to deploy that potential. Ultimately, that’s what a lot of research is: finding out things we don’t yet know, then using that to produce the best outcome.”
