Footage from a small island...
THE REMOTE ISLAND of Capraia is a far cry from the Pathology Laboratories in Oxford. It is no surprise that Dr Mike Leahy jumped at the chance to join a team of scientists sent there for an upcoming BBC television series, Rough Science.
Dr Leahy - currently researching the influenza virus - swapped his microscope and lab for twelve days in a disused prison, with a chemist, a physicist, an ethanobotanist, and a marine biologist. They were set science-based problems, to be solved using only a few basic tools, the island's natural resources and some lateral thinking.
The challenge of determining their longitude and latitude - without wrist watches or radios to aid them - was the most daunting, according to Dr Leahy. The tasks set included making a radio, generating electricity and making insect repellant - all to be completed within three days. Dr Leahy admits that they had to bend the rules once or twice - they were given magnets, without which generating electricity would have been almost impossible. However there were some failures amongst the tasks. Although they came close to constructing a makeshift camera by making a light sensitive film with silver iodide and paper, using a broken bottle as a lens, it failed to produce an image.
On the whole, it was "manic fun", despite being hard work. But Dr Leahy found the long debates over the action to take, or adapting solutions to make for more exciting viewing, frustrating." We had to keep reminding ourselves we were there to make a TV show, that people had been generating electricity for years and we were not the first," he said. There were moments of tension, but viewers tuning in hoping for any serious disputes will be disappointed.
Interestingly, Dr Leahy found his experience as a mechanic - his profession before taking his first degree at 26 - of more use than the scientific training he received at Oxford. He felt that expertise learnt in a support and rescue team for the Peking-Paris rally was useful. Dr Leahy revealed that the only reason he started his academic career, studying for an A-Level at a higher education college in Abingdon, was to win a dare. He laments that students under this Labour government are "being stitched up", so that talented youngsters have to think twice about going to university and being saddled with the debt that he avoided under the Conservatives. He suspects the reason his name was one of those suggested when the BBC approached the Institute of Virology was the reputation he has there as "game for a laugh", dating back to his years as a student. The prospect of participating excited Dr Leahy, an intrepid traveller, who thinks the programme fills a gap in schedule for entertaining scientific shows. "Granted, there are programmes like Horizon and Equinox - which are heavyweight shows - but the lay person may not bother watching these shows," he says, welcoming more popular programmes such as Tomorrow's World and Rough Science.
He also thinks that "science has been given a bad rap in the press recently and it is great to get the chance to redress the balance", as well as to spark interest in science. This is a sentiment shared by fellow islander Mark Bullivant, a chemist from the Open University. "Working on the challenges took me back to my schooldays in that it gave me the same sense of awe that I got as an inquisitive teenager in a chemistry lab." The web-site (www.open2.net) offers viewers a chance to join an online team to solve the following week's challenge. The producers believe that a booklet outlining each week's activities promises to make Rough Science a more interactive experience.
Recently science has had to defend itself from widespread suspicion and outspoken opponents, often coming off badly in debates about controversial issues. Rough Science may do something to remind the public that science - and scientists - can be enlightening and possibly even something to get enthusiastic about.
18th May 2000