Total synthesis funding declared top national priority

WASHINGTON -- Among recent changes to the federal budget was a joint announcement by the White House and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that along with postmodernist literature critique and intermediate basketweaving, natural product total synthesis has been declared a "top funding priority" for the nation.

The news of the funding priority shift Monday morning came as welcome news to thousands of synthetic chemists in academia, who had worried in recent years that federal belt-tightening might divert funds away from their activities.

Although the funding measures have been laid out in detail in a 6000-page document readily accessible on the CBO website, several government officials gave public statements early on Monday to clarify the scope and magnitude of the announcement.

From the White House's press room, President Barack Obama spoke to reporters. "I consider this my most important contribution to the nation's interest so far," he said, stepping away from his prepared script and wiping a hint of a tear from his eye as he addressed the cameras earnestly. "For too long, our federal government has prioritized translational and applied research. And while contributions to medicine and energy are somewhat important, or something, I guess, we've too long neglected the biggest questions in science that will keep our country great. For example, there are so many alkaloid and polyketides that have been isolated from sea sponges that we just don't know the absolute stereochemical configuration of. And a few of these have some sort of cytotoxic activity or something at millimolar concentrations," the President added.

Cries of "USA! USA!" could be heard from several reporters in the audience who were briefly overtaken with emotion.

NIH director Francis S. Collins issued a statement later in the day on behalf of the National Institute of Health. "We are allied with the President on this strategic historic decision," the report reads. "While some might object to the fact that the NIH has completely defunded cancer research, antibiotic research, and genetics projects, we caution the public that the money invested in total synthesis will reap much richer rewards for the scientific community and the public. For instance, one of the total syntheses might contribute a valuable synthetic method that can be used in a different total synthesis from the same lab group."

The NSF did not issue a statement but a source within the organization pointed out that all NSF predoctoral fellowships this year were awarded to students studying total synthesis.

Despite the billions of dollars of refocused funding, not everyone is happy with the move. The American Physics Society issued a formal letter of protest against the measures, which are estimated to result in the closure of 99.5% of physics labs across the country. Said the report: "What's a carbon?"

Surprising to many was an announcement by the Pentagon that drastic military funding cuts would be made to support the total synthesis effort. US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel addressed troops worldwide via a televised message. "Um, yeah, so, guys, we appreciate your hard work and whatnot, but you can all go home. We're cancelling all this 'war' business, honestly. It's a money sink." In one video of an Army base in Afghanistan, soldiers were seen reacting to the news with elation. Hagel continued: "And let's be honest. Enlarging the postdoc pool is the true route to national security."

In other news, job prospects for chemists look to be increasingly encouraging. In 2013 alone, twelve of the fifteen largest pharmaceutical companies have launched massive hiring campaigns, resulting in nearly complete employment among recent PhD graduates.

Reading assignments, vol. 10

Here's the link roundup for the week:

Science communication

• The Open Notebook, a science-journalism-focused site described as a "non-profit organization that provides unique tools and resources to help science journalists at all experience levels hone their craft", is introducing a series of short videos featuring prominent science writers giving advice. First up is the esteemed Deborah Blum. Watch the video: the point she makes about being able to distill things down to a sentence is a good one. It extends beyond journalism, too--can you sum up your one-hour research seminar in a sentence? How about your journal club article?
• Physics professor and blogger Chad Orzel has some recommendations about science blogging. First and foremost: enjoy it.
• Illustrator Glendon Mellow points out some ineffective or just plain bad uses of imagery in pro-vaccination science communication. He uses this as a case study of why science communicators need to be mindful of the images they use and why using illustrations/photos can be beneficial to reaching an audience.
• Maryn McKenna brings some results from ScienceOnline to the internet, discussing what science writers can learn from genre novels.

Denialism, chemophobia, and fraud

• Last week I included a link to a chemophobic, medically-related New York Times piece accompanied by a commentary/analysis by Michelle Francl at The Culture of Chemistry. This week, Francl has taken her argument to Slate magazine with an excellent, pointed piece. The second page, especially, contains an effective argument against blind naturophilia.
• At Forbes, Emily Willingham provides recommendations for fighting denialism via a social-networking, almost grassroots approach. She also recommends not calling denialism "denialism". I think her points are good, and I would suspect they are empirically more effective than a Dawkins-style mind-clubbing.
• Derek Lowe points out a frightening example of a post at Retraction Watch being taken down after a fraudulent DMCA notice was filed against the blog. This kind of thing is a threat to scientific integrity and is illustrative of how 'reputation companies' and others can stifle important communication.

Chemical education & academia

• Glen Ernst writes skeptically of the concept of a "10K BA" (i.e. radically cheap, cost-effective degree) in the context of undergraduate chemical education. It's hard to imagine being able to support effective lab facilities for that amount.
• Educators: Don't miss grad-student and educational specialist Michael Evans' thoughtful and thorough chemical education roundup.
• At Fragments of Truth, we find a tongue-in-cheek 'story' proposing "erase undesirable data" coupons in order to accelerate PhD student publication and graduation.
• Kate Clancy and Chris Chambers provide a response to "pseudoscience and stereotyping" in regards to how to increase involvement of girls in science. At Brain Flapping, Dean Burnett provides a parody of stereotypes with some amusing "recommendations" for making boys more interested in science.
• From C&EN comes news that the director of the NSF, Subra Suresh, has stepped down to accept a job as the president of Carnegie Mellon University.

Public policy

• The abundance of over-used or inappropriatedly-used antibiotics in agriculture is an important topic for public health. This brief piece in Wired, with accompanying infographics, shows that the problem is indeed bad. Some highlights: 80% of antibiotic use in the US is for livestock; also, Salmonella isolates from poultry are increasingly showing multidrug resistance. The piece also questions the efficacy of the FDA's policy of "voluntary" antibiotic regulation/reporting.
• Scot Huler points out that North Carolina's new leader of the Department of Environmental and Natural Resources is a climate-change denier who considers oil to be a renewable resource. 
• A little feature by Colorado State University explores the role one faculty member, an expert in plant-pathogen intereactions, is playing in biosecurity and public policy. It's a cool example to illustrate the importance of "beyond-the-lab" science impact.
• The American Institute of Physics (AIP) provides a summary of a the first House Science Committee meeting of this Congressional term. It seems favorable; topics of discussion included how to increase numbers in STEM education (including improving K-12 STEM education), how to maintain R&D tax credits for businesses, and how to improve immigration policies to retain international STEM graduates. The chemistry job market was absent.

Other

• B.R.S.M. points out an interesting paper that is decidedly not gluten-free.
• At ChemBark, Paul (and commenters) point out some highly-cited chemistry papers, comparing the Sanger sequencing paper to KCN's entire career. There's a 1.4:1 ratio of citations in that case, which isn't really fair: Sanger sequencing is at least one or two orders of magnitude more important than KCN's career.
• Chemjobber describes a (somewhat) large-scale industrial use of C-H activation. This area of chemistry is the basis of many high-profile academic groups, so it's nice to see examples adopted in what some would call the 'real world'. 
• See Arr Oh scribes an open letter homage to R.B. Woodward. Also included is a link to open-access PDFs of R.B. Woodward's doctoral (and bachelor's) theses from MIT. It's really quite fascinating to be able to see how the nature of chemical writing has (and hasn't) changed since 1937. My favorite sentence so far: "When the reaction was complete, the dark brown oil was washed several times with water dried over a small amount of anhydrous sodium sulphate and distilled in a gigh vacuum" (sic). 
• Derek Lowe discusses a recent HR-geared report on pharma employment. A heavy implication of the report is that management is having a difficult time finding qualified employees, which Derek disagrees with.
• This New Yorker profile of Amy Bishop--the scientist who shot six of her colleagues in a faculty meeting--is a long, long read, but it's well-done and illustrates the complexities of what the media (and others) tend to simplify as either a problem with the pressures of academia or purely a case of poor mental health.
• Ewan Birney of The Guardian brings us a set of short vignettes about the role emotions play in science. It's interesting to read and be mindful of, especially given public perception of scientists (as well as scientist perception of scientists).
• This Scientific American blogpost by Samuel Arbesman discusses a new metric for determining the ideal impact-to-cost ratio when selecting an open-access journal.
• I liked this story at The Crux (Discover Magazine) about the role of microbes in shaping biodiversity.
• Cassandra Willyard (The Last Word on Nothing) writes about a classical music album in the 1960s that was produced as an advertisement for a sleep aid. The album's liner notes include the chemical structure for the drug.

Reading assignments, vol. 5

Despite the widely celebrated secular/pagan holiday this week, science-related journalism trudged on. Some interesting posts below related to the fiscal cliff, science education (creationism is sneaking back), scientific imagery and creativity, and some science- (and pseudoscience)-related awards.

Science and politics

• New Statesman guest editors Brian Cox and Robin Ince have written a pointed commentary on the role of science in policymaking. They highlight that non-scientific political issues have invaded public interpretation of science; this risks damaging society's confidence in scientific truth. It's a good read. A couple of responses quickly followed, including two weakly critical responses from Rebekah Higgitt (The Guardian), Jack Stilgoe (also The Guardian), and a favorable reply from Jon Butterworth (still at The Guardian). I commented on this earlier this week here.
• Discover Magazine blogger Keith Kloor (Collide-a-Scape) comments on the above article and also on the current toxic environment of the science-vs-religion fights. He argues against the "Puritanical" zero-tolerance policy of Richard Dawkins and like-minded skeptics.
• Bill Nye has written a sort of open letter to the federal legislature regarding the impending fiscal cliff; he urges (like most of us do) a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, but makes the case that legislators avoid cuts in science. His argument is that science drives innovation which drives American economic superiority. Is science going to be immune from the cuts? I doubt it, unfortunately.
• Antibiotic use (also discussed last week) in livestock is a major contributor to widespread drug resistance. Laura Rogers reports on recent issues and developments in laws and regulations regarding antibiotic use, including increased oversight of how and where the drugs are used, an end to non-prescription antibiotic use for animals, and stopping the practice of using antibiotics when they're not needed.

Bad science and bad journalism

• Under the "bad journalism" theme comes a Fox News (!!!) science section piece titled "Duh! 12 obvious science findings of 2012". I have a problem with pieces that pander to readers by highlighting "obvious" research (especially since many things previously considered "obvious" are now known not to be true). To be fair to Fox News, this same piece appeared at Huffington Post.
• Complementary to bad journalism is bad science. Christopher Wanjek writes on HuffingtonPost about  the top five science retractions of 2012. The first one (the scientist who made up his own peer reviewers and clued editors in by responding too favorably and too quickly) is the best. This, too, is cross-posted to Fox News. Although the retractions highlighted are certainly disturbing, the tone of the article's introduction sets an atmosphere of general mistrust of scientists and science. Of course, scientific misconduct is serious (and increasingly we are being made aware of it) but the author seems to de-emphasize the role of kneejerk journalism in public disappointment.
• Disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield (the guy who had that fraudulent study linking autism and vaccines) has been given the Golden Duck award for 'lifetime achievement in quackery'. The award is part of an effort by scientists and science advocates to spread awareness of bad science and pseudoscience. However, some, such as Frank Swain of SciencePunk, feel the award is counterproductive: things like this come across as smug and contemptuous, and the group giving out the Golden Duck isn't influential enough to matter.
• To the long list of "people at The Ohio State University who have gotten caught committing research fraud" we can add pharmacologist Terry S. Elton, who apparently manipulated over two dozen figures in papers and grant applications. (For other examples see pharmacy professor Robert J. Lee and, most familiar to chemists, Leo Paquette).

Science education

• Michael Zimmerman describes Indiana State Senator Dennise Kruse's attempt to insert creationism into Indiana public school science classes under the tired guise of "academic freedom". Zimmerman points out the ridiculousness of expecting middle schoolers to be able to be able to reach the same scientific conclusions as scientific researchers.
• A New York Times piece by Jennifer Kingson gives a brief and interesting history of chemistry sets.
• Mark at Chemistry Blog takes issue with the model of bonding/antibonding used in one of this year's Christmas Lectures. Meanwhile, we in the USA (i.e. 'Murica) remain confused.

Imagery in science

• Imagery and aesthetics are usually the last thing on scientists' minds, but they can be instrumental in promotion of science. See not only this post by Alex Wild asking readers to submit the year's best science imagery, but also this fascinating blog where a chemist uses large quantities of materials and takes beautiful high-resolution -- and artistic -- photos of labware and reactions.
• Wired features a gallery of what they describe as the best scientific figures of 2012 (i.e. figures in journals, not "figures" as in people/scientists). I like "The Essence of Tomato" -- it's the one that looks like a DNA microchip heat map and it describes relative abundance of various flavor compounds in varietals of tomatoes. There's also an image of a lonely yttrium atom.
• On a related tangent, there's a piece by Virginia Hughes on Only Human over at National Geographic regarding perception of science and the importance of creativity. It's short and well-written and highlights important issues in how children at impressionable ages are losing interest because they don't see creativity in it. The piece also addresses strategies for combating this notion.

Other

• An incidence of chemophobia from a science blog (Last Word on Nothing) has attracted attention from the chemblogosphere (namely this post by See Arr Oh). It's part of a series where the writers talk about their fears of certain sciences. Though it perhaps comes off as anti-chemistry and can be seen as pointing the central science in boring/incomprehensible tones, I think that it importantly highlights the need for science educators to address this (read the last two paragraphs) in making the subject more broadly accessible. I suppose I object to the post less than See Arr Oh does.
• The winners of the National Medal of Science this year include chemists Allen J. Bard (electrochemistry; UT Austin) and M. Frederick Hawthorne (inorganic chemistry; Missouri, previously UCLA). Also on the list is influential biomedical scientist Leroy Hood (systems biology; Johns Hopkins).
• B.R.S.M. comments on the the synthetic biology vs organic synthesis rivalry.
• See Arr Oh asks readers about vacation time in academia, industry, etc. 1 day a year should be good enough for anybody, right?
• Here on Not the Lab I've added a Biology Resources page that may be useful to some; it'll grow.
• The Huffington Post featured Sense About Science's list of the year's most science illiterate celebrities; it's a pretty amusing read. It also includes a list of buzzwords that are commonly used but are meaningless, including "detox", "immune-boosting", "superfood", "oxygenating", and "cleansing". Meanwhile, the Huffington Post swings to the other end of the quackery spectrum by publishing a favorable article about holiday "cleanses".

Opinions on opinions on science's influence on opinions' influence on science

A post at NewStatesman by guest editors Brian Cox (British particle physicist and science popularizer) and Robin Ince (comedian/writer) highlights the danger of political controversies in undermining public trust in science. It's been responded to several times (read this or this or this or this or this), but it's worth pointing out some key passages.

Cox and Ince begin by contrasting pre-Internet times to modern times, which illustrates an important difference in how the public perceives science (bold emphasis mine):

The story of the past hundred years is one of unparalleled human advances, medically, technologically and intellectually. The foundation for these changes is the scientific method. In every room in your house, there are innovations that in 1912 would have been considered on the cusp of magic. The problem with a hundred years of unabated progress, however, is that its continual nature has made us blasé. We expect immediate hot water, 200 channels of television 24 hours a day, and the ability to speak directly to anyone anywhere in the world any time via an orbiting network of spacecraft. Any less is tantamount to penury. Where once the arrival of a television in a street or the availability of international flight would have been greeted with excitement and awe, and the desire to understand how those innovations came into being, it is now expected that every three months you’ll be queuing outside the Apple store for a new wafer-thin slab of brushed metal, blithely unaware that watching a movie in the palm of your hand has been made possible only through improbable and hard-won leaps in the understanding of the quantum behaviour of electrons in silicon.

It's pointed and true. We have more technology now than ever before; scientists even within disciplines are unable to explain it to each others (how many organic chemists, for instance, have a grasp of how LCDs, which are built on small molecules, work?). There's more to know -- more availability of wonderment -- than ever before, but given how common electronic devices are, it's easier to use them than to try to understand them.

The authors describe nature as an "arbiter above opinion." They quote Feynman with the assertion that if an opinion or guess conflicts with the available evidence, it is wrong.

The assertion is surely uncontroversial, but implementing it can be prohibitively difficult, primarily because it demands that everything be subordinate to evidence. Accepting this is fraught with cultural difficulty, because authority in general rests with grandees, gods, or more usually some inseparable combination of the two. Even in a secular democracy, a fundamental tenet of the system is that politicians are elected to reflect and act upon the opinions of the people, or are at least given temporary authority by the people to act upon their own. Science is a framework with only one absolute: all opinions, theories and “laws” are open to revision in the face of evidence. It should not be seen or presented, therefore, as a body of inviolate knowledge against which policy should be judged; the effect of this would be to replace one priesthood with another. Rather, science is a process, a series of structures that allow us, in as unbiased a way as possible, to test our assertions against Nature.

Cox and Ince then offer up climate change denialism as an example. From their piece:

The loud criticism of climate science is motivated in the main not by technical objections, but by the difficult political choices with which it confronts us. This is important, because there must be a place where science stops and politics begins, and this border is an extremely complex and uncomfortable one. Science can’t tell us what to do about our changing climate. It can only inform us that it is changing (this is a statement based on data) and tell us the most probable reasons for this given the current state of our understanding. For a given policy response, it can also tell us how likely that response is to be effective, to the best of our understanding. The choice of policy response itself is not a purely scientific question, however, because it necessarily has moral, geopolitical and economic components.

The key passage, I think, is this one, which comes near the end of the article (bold emphasis mine):

Science is the framework within which we reach conclusions about the natural world. These conclusions are always preliminary, always open to revision, but they are the best we can do. It is not logical to challenge the findings of science unless there are specific, evidence-based reasons for doing so. Elected politicians are free to disregard its findings and recommendations. Indeed, there may be good reasons for doing so. But they must understand in detail what they are disregarding, and be prepared to explain with precision why they chose to do so. It is not acceptable to see science as one among many acceptable “views”. Science is the only way we have of exploring nature, and nature exists outside of human structures.

Yes!

Though several of the responses to the piece have been negative, with respondents misreading the piece as an insistence that science and politics be divorced of each other, Jon Butterworth at The Guardian agrees with Cox and Ince and attempts to clarify the argument:

My reading of Cox and Ince is that they argue that the boundary between these cases, tricky though it can be, should be kept as clear as possible. This is not a claim for the supremacy of science, nor complete separation between science and politics, but is an attempt to direct political debate to the areas where it can be fruitful.

I don't see any suggestion there that science is, or can be, separate from politics. Not only are scientific results important input to political debate - often setting the boundary conditions of what is known to be possible - but politics at all levels influences the science we do. Taking examples from my own experience - CERN was set up with political as well scientific goals, to raise the level of European cooperation in an important science area - "Bringing nations together through science". The European Space Agency is explicit about having the political and economic goal of supporting the European aerospace industry, yet enables enormous amounts of science. The decisions as to what experiments are done are often influenced by politics, ranging from office to inter-governmental level. Suppression of results and cherry picking, as discussed for example in Ben Goldacre's books, are explicitly political, moral and economic issues. The progress of science is also potentially warped by journals, by funding reviews and by appointment panels. But progress it does, nevertheless. The evidence is all around you.

Agreement all around. Head-in-the-sand denials that politics has (or should have) any influence on scientific practice, or that science has (or should have) any influence on public policy are misguided. As a society, we need to be able to recognize what is political ideology and what is scientific truth/fact so that we can harness science to best influence policy and the public welfare. Science can't, and shouldn't, be separated from politics, but politics shouldn't be the bird droppings on the Windshield of the Car of Science that make it hard to see while at the wheel.

One of my favorite comments comes from a user named TheBabelFish, who offered this response to Butterworth's piece:

We have made specialists of our politicians. The career path is inexorable. They spend their entire careers learning to play the game of politics, how to get elected, how to spin stories, events, even facts, to their own advantage. It's a system that is very good at turning out politicians, but very bad at turning out leaders. 

If scientific data, to pluck a random example wildly out of the air, requires a 'hard sell,' persuading the electorate to make a sacrifice, then they won't do it. They just won't. They've been trained, in their speciality of politics, never to give the public bad news if it can possibly be avoided.

It's a good point. A symptom of our political system; with a dearth of scientists in government (they're trained as specialists in something else, after all), I don't see an easy cure.

Reading assignments, vol. 2

Here go some interesting reads from this week:

Research policy:

• Check out this commentary by AAAS CEO Alan I. Leshner over at the Chronicle of Higher Education. He and Steven J. Fluharty bemoan the increasing cost in money and time of administrative burdens on research labs.
• Also at the Chronicle, Peter Suber (Harvard Open Access Project) and Darius Cuplinskas make the case for open access to research in order to benefit the public and spur innovation.
• At Scientific American, James M. Gentile writes about the persistent gender bias in the sciences. Most troubling is the double-blind study showing that male and female faculty members both rate female job applicants lower than male regardless of content.

Science and the public:

• I like cringe-worthy television science. See Arr Oh points some out over at Just Like Cooking
• Mark at Chemistry-Blog laments over the idiocy of chemophobia when tied with administration.

Science writing:

• Here's a Guardian/Observer column by Ian Tucker with Q&A with some prominent science writers about what makes good science writing. 
• A series of tips from Scientific American blogger Khalil A. Cassimally on how science writers can harness social media to gather information for writing purposes. 
• Matt Shipman encourages researchers to engage in public communication of science, and says funding agencies want them to as well.
• At ERV, some comments/advice on how not to be a horrible pop sci journalist. 

Other:

• On Chemistry Blog, a writeup of a K.C. Nicolaou essay just published online for Angewandte. It's a historical perspective on total synthesis. Although perhaps calling total synthesis the "flagship of chemistry" is an exaggeration.
• Chemjobber puts the fiscal cliff in perspective, and the prospects look poor (don't they always?) for grad students and postdocs.
• Drew, of webcomic Toothpaste for Dinner, issues an important and vital homonuclear warning. He also coauthors Married to the Sea which four years ago published this comic which is taped above my desk at all times. (For those still reading, Drew was previously a chemist and is also hilarious).
• At Just Like Cooking, See Arr Oh points out some scatologically unusual reaction conditions.