Most science is a step-by-step process, with one piece of research building on the next in a continuing sequence of discovery. Sometimes, in the midst of all this activity, a bright, sparkling discovery is made or some obvious threshold is crossed. It doesn't matter if it comes from luck, intuition or mental effort, it flows directly from the creative effort involved in research and experimentation.
These discoveries in turn become like new jumping-off points for yet more research. Fresh creativity is applied to something wholly new and the discoverer in a sense loses control over the original finding. He or sure is left unsure where the next generation of researchers will take the work, but take it they will, into uncharted territory.
Who is responsible for subsequent developments - the original discoverer, or the scientist who followed after? Was Einstein responsible in some way for nuclear weapons or should we blame John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton - the latter Ireland's only Nobel laureate in physics - as the pair who first split the atom? Who should worry about such issues? Should scientists curtail their pursuit of knowledge if there is a risk discoveries coming from it might be used for bad purposes? Or do the ethical niceties of these arguments rest elsewhere, perhaps with lawmakers or the public?
Prof Lewis Wolpert, who addressed the first Irish Times/ RDS Science Today lecture in May, believes scientists should not have to make ethical decisions about their work. Scientists were involved in seeking knowledge and that is all.
"The moment you start censoring the sort of reliable knowledge you get, you start getting into trouble," he said. The decision to build the nuclear bomb had been taken by politicians, not scientists, he pointed out.
He also argued that the public view that knowledge was dangerous was "deeply embedded in our culture". Yet the current mistrust of scientists themselves is at least as powerful an influence in today's world. It is not just the knowledge itself but the deliverers of that knowledge who have become suspect in recent decades.
People used to be more trusting of the people who had the specialist knowledge that we might call science. All through the industrial revolution, society expected that as problems arose they would be dealt with one by one through the application of science and technology. Marvellous, steam-driven machines were developed, engineering feats were accomplished, productivity was increased through mechanisation. This continued through into the 20th century, and as Britain's industrial might waned so that of the US waxed. All through the early part of this century the perception was that a technology-fix could be applied to almost any ill. Calmette and Guerin developed a TB vaccine in 1923, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. New discoveries were emerging across the whole range of sciences.
Less clear is what happened to disrupt this comfortable relationship between scientists and the public. Was it a gradual understanding of the awesome nature of the decision to discharge two nuclear explosions over Japan to end the second World War? Or did it come over the following 20 years, as the damage caused by massive and unbridled industrialisation began to emerge, a problem that has resisted the quick fix of technology?