Sixteen Columns

Vittorio over at Labsolutely has a very clever and amusing post up re-imagining the X-Men as chemists.

So what other media genres share cross-over with our field?

The modern art form deemed the "chick flick" shares key features with tactics used to recruit students into graduate school in chemistry. Namely: (1) hopelessly romantic view of the content; (2) focus on idolizing the celebrities of the subfield (e.g. Tom Hanks, Phil Baran); and (3) careful shielding of the subject from reality of life/lab. And of course, both chick flicks and science place an emphasis on diaries.

In a salute to both, here are some chick flicks in the context of science:*

1. How to Lose a Grant in 10 Days
2. Unemployed Going on 30
3. The Proposal
4. Never Been Published
5. 27 Postdocs
6. What's Reproducibility Got to Do with It
7. The Devil Wears PPE
8. Sixteen Columns
9. My Best Friend's Defense
10. What PIs Want
11. Save the Last Authorship
12. Bridget Jones's Lab Notebook
13. When Harry Met Sally at an ACS Regional Meeting
14. The Lab Notebook
15. Out of Academia
16. Sleepless in Grant Season
17. The English Postdoc
18. Gloves Actually
19. How Stella Got Her Glassware Back
20. 10 Things I Hate About U...niversities
21. Pride & PNAS
22. Crazy, Stupid, Reaction Mechanisms
23. Peggy Sue Got Funded
24. P.S. I Love the Combiflash
25. Flashcolumn

* Note: these are in no particular order; the author claims no expertship on relative merits of chick flicks.

The Office and the lab

Just as the #ChemMovieCarnival drew to a close, chemistry made another appearance on national television!

In the most recent episode of The Office (a mockumentary about a paper company; it's usually hit-or-miss but still funnier than the British version*), the branch manager, Andy Bernard, was cast in a chemical safety video ("HRPDC Chemical Handling Protocol") in an attempt to break into an acting career.

The on-screen lab was pretty clearly a molecular biology or chemical biology space -- you can see microscopes, centrifuges, Pipetmans,** a cold-room, 96-well plates, and plenty of buffers; additionally, the glassware is largely Erlenmeyers, graduated cylinders, and volumetric flasks.

Unlike most featured lab spaces on TV (we're looking at you, NCIS and CSI...), it looks like the producers used an actual lab. If not an actual lab, it's a very good replica (as evidenced by the abundant bench clutter).

For the sake of the chemical community, I present a graphical abstract below.

Drying rack contains an appropriate mix of glassware.

What lab would be complete without an egregious safety violation?
(note the presence of snacks in the lower left corner)

Benchtop clutter looks about right.

Note the scientist in the far background using proper PPE.

\

Demonstration of eyewash station use, plus screaming.

Note that undergraduates usually have the same aversion to the eyewash station that Andy Bernard does.

And my favorite exchange of dialogue:

Director 1: Okay, stop. Why are you smiling?
Andy: I just made a character choice to be a scientist who really likes what he does and enjoys his job.
Director 2: Okay, well, maybe no smiling on this one.

* Note: some people get really upset when you say this to them. Try it!
** I love me some Pipetmans.

#ChemMovieCarnival: Chocolate and chemical academia

It's time for the #ChemMovieCarnival, as organized by See Arr Oh (who posted this first day round-up). So far we've seen chemistry featured in Fight Club, Iron Man 2, The Great Escape, The Absent Minded Professor, G.I. Joe, Real Genius, and MacGyver, among others.

Some of the above examples highlight some pretty bad movie science. I thought I'd share a movie clip that was on the other end of the spectrum!

Everyone's familiar with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory--the 1971 musical film starring the immortal Gene Wilder. The film's protagonist is Charlie Bucket, a child from a poor family whose genuine heart leads him to success where several other spoiled/privileged children fail. Early on, we're shown Charlie's education, including the following chemistry demonstration. The clip is a little modified from the original at the end (it was the only one I could find!).



It's a remarkably accurate portrayal of life in chemical academia. After all, all the hallmarks are there:

• Disregard for proper PPE/lab safety.
• Intellectual snobbery/faculty egotism.
• Over-eager undergrads who don't know what they're doing.
• Secrecy and irreproducibility.

Just like life in the lab! (Of course, Pure Imagination is perhaps more apt to describe the pragmatism of many projects).

Singers and musicians, apocryphal quotes, and chemists

Recently, I saw the following quote get shared widely among my acquaintances on a particular social media outlet:

Singers and Musicians are some of the most driven, courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with more day-to-day rejection in one year than most people do in a lifetime. Every day, they face the financial challenge of living a freelance lifestyle, the disrespect of people who think they should get real jobs, and their own fear that they’ll never work again. Every day, they have to ignore the possibility that the vision they have dedicated their lives to is a pipe dream. With every note, they stretch themselves, emotionally and physically, risking criticism and judgment. With every passing year, many of them watch as the other people their age achieve the predictable milestones of normal life - the car, the family, the house, the nest egg. Why? Because musicians and singers are willing to give their entire lives to a moment - to that melody, that lyric, that chord, or that interpretation that will stir the audience’s soul. Singers and Musicians are beings who have tasted life’s nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their creative spirit and touched another’s heart. In that instant, they were as close to magic, God, and perfection as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes.
-David Ackert, LA Times

I kind of hate to reproduce it--not because it's pandering and indulgent*, necessarily, but because I can't find the original source, and as a scientist, that bothers me. It's attributed to David Ackert of the LA Times. No one seems to mention that the LA Times website doesn't even mention a David Ackert, much less this quote. So the authenticity/origin is dubious (that doesn't seem to matter to those who push it along). 

A quick search of the internet reveals several modifications of the quote, wherein people have substituted 'actors' and 'artists' for 'singers and musicians'. So, I figured: why not 'chemists'? (We do use instruments). Let's try.

[Chemists] are some of the most driven, courageous people on the face of the earth. They deal with more day-to-day rejection in one [group meeting] than most people do in a lifetime. Every day, they face the financial challenge of living a [STEM] lifestyle, the disrespect of people who think they should get real jobs, and their own fear that they’ll never work again. Every day, they have to ignore the possibility that the vision they have dedicated their lives to is a pipe dream. With every [column], they stretch themselves, emotionally and physically, risking criticism and judgment. With every passing year, many of them watch as the other people their age achieve the predictable milestones of normal life - the car, the family, the house, the nest egg. Why? Because [chemists] are willing to give their entire lives to a [synthesis] - to that [ring], that [stereocenter], that [functional group], or that [weird perfluorinated tail] that will [get them into JACS, or Org. Lett., or heck, Tet. Lett., it's gonna get ignored anyway]. [Chemists] are beings who have tasted life’s nectar in that crystal moment when they poured out their [organic layer by mistake] and [broke] another’s [favorite sep. funnel]. In that instant, they were as close to [unemployment] as anyone could ever be. And in their own hearts, they know that to dedicate oneself to that moment is worth a thousand lifetimes [...PSYCH! Hahahahahahaahahaah. Heh.].
-David Ackert, LA Times

Seems to fit.

Update: 11:05 PM. Re: source of original, for those interested (thanks to Chemjobber for the legwork). According to David Ackert:

@gravelpot I wrote the piece 15 years ago- it originally appeared in Backstage West. Don't think it ever appeared in LA Times.
— David Ackert (@DavidAckert) January 28, 2013

* Caveat: I've done a lot of music stuff myself; I'm not hating on musicians here. Just saying.