Carrots, chlorine, and chemophobia

On a recent lunchtime "survey of the literature" (i.e. Facebook break) I noticed that an old classmate posted the following paragraph (it's not new--but I hadn't seen it before):

“DANGER TO YOUR FAMILY!!

From the Department of Life Education:

Baby Carrots:

The following is information from a farmer who grows and packages carrots for IGA, METRO, LOBLAWS, etc.

The small cocktail (baby) carrots you buy in small plastic bags are made using the larger crooked or deformed carrots which are put through a machine which cuts and shapes them into cocktail carrots – most people probably know this already.

What you may not know and should know is the following:

Once the carrots are cut and shaped into cocktail carrots they are dipped in a solution of water and chlorine in order to preserve them (this is the same chlorine used in your pool).

Since they do not have their skin or natural protective covering, they give them a higher dose of chlorine.

You will notice that once you keep these carrots in your refrigerator for a few days, a white covering will form on the carrots. This is the chlorine which resurfaces. At what cost do we put our health at risk to have esthetically pleasing vegetables?

Chlorine is a very well-known carcinogen, which causes Cancer. I thought this was worth passing on. Pass it on to as many people as possible in hopes of informing them where these carrots come from and how they are processed.

I used to buy those baby carrots for vegetable dips. I know that I will never buy them again!!!!”

First, it should be noted that the person who shared the post works in a biomedical profession and probably should know better. Second, this looks like a classic chemophobic recipe: (1) take familiar concept; (2) point out chemical; (3) extol nastiness of chemical, real or imaginary; (4) panic.

It should be pointed out, of course, that the "warning" is alarmist and exaggerated. Most fruits/veggies are rinsed in water containing low-ppm chlorine -- levels comparable to drinking water -- not in a highly-chlorinated solution as implied. Chlorine is an antimicrobial protectant in thse cases. Moreover, the white residue is, obviously to chemists, not chlorine 'resurfacing' (???) but simply dehydrated carrot. And something that needs mention: there's no evidence that chlorine is a carcinogen (see here and here for instance) (You wouldn't want to go on a date with pure chlorine, of course, but not because of a cancer danger).

The chemophobia doesn't surprise me, though, since "chlorine" sounds nasty.

I am surprised, however, by some of the responses on the internet. They're unusually fact-based! In fact, in the first two pages of Google search results for "baby carrots chlorine", only a few support the myth. But let's look at the chemophobic minority first:

The chemophobes

Angela Garrison, a writer at alternative health site The Alternative Daily, gave this warning about the carrots (also posted at RiseEarth) in 2012. She largely parrots the viral bite above, adding some nonsense about baby carrots being ground-up regular carrots (they're sliced, but certainly not ground, and it would be pretty impressive if manufacturers could reconstitute the texture like that from carrot paste). Additionally, the title ("Why Baby Carrots are Killing You") is perhaps more dramatic than warranted. She alleges that the chlorine bath gives them their orange color (and has never apparently heard of carotene). It's worth reading the article (which is characteristically factless); but I have to include this excerpt which does a smashing good job of confusing chlorine with chloroform and delightfully ignores both citation and any discussion of dosage:

As defined by the EPA, Chlorine is a pesticide. Its purpose is to kill living organisms. So it would make sense that when you ingest chlorine, it kills some parts of our body like the healthy bacteria in your gut and intestinal flora for instance. Chlorine is a highly toxic, yellow-green gas most heavily used in chemical agents like household cleaners and can be found in the air near industrial areas especially around paper processing plants. Exposure to Chlorine has been linked to health problems such as sore throat, coughing, eye and skin irritation, rapid breathing, narrowing of the bronchi, wheezing, blue coloring of the skin, accumulation of fluid in the lungs, pain in the lung region, severe eye and skin burns, lung collapse, a type of asthma known as Reactive Airways Dysfunction Syndrome (RADS).

Chlorine is also added to the public water supply. So not only are you drinking it, but you are absorbing it through the largest organ in your body, your skin. In fact, 2/3 of human absorption of chlorine is from inhaling the steam in the form of chloroform and fast absorption through your open pores in the warm shower or bath. The inhalation of chloroform is a suspected cause of asthma and bronchitis, especially in children… which has increased 300% in the last two decades. Other health risks associated with chloroform is cancer, potential reproductive damage, birth defects, dizziness, fatigue, headache, liver and kidney damage. Chloroform is also found in the air and in food, like baby carrots.

While no one is encouraging anyone to go breathe the stuff, that's a bit much.

Another unsuprisingly chemophobic source is Mercola.com (website for prominent snake-oil salesman Joseph Mercola). Mercola starts (in 2009) by insisting that chlorine is a carcinogen (spoiler: it's not), delves into a litany of other nasty roles chlorine and chlorinated byproducts can play, and ends by recommending chlorine-free carrots. Total Health magazine seems to largely echo (almost plagiarize) these claims.

The chemophobia has to have been taken fairly seriously by many--indeed, Bolthouse Farms created an entire website (truthaboutbabycarrots.com) to respond to the claims. But surprisingly, the above three examples were the only two immediate negative results in my two-page Google foray.

The non-chemophobes

Interesting, the majority of responses to the chlorine-carrot allegations are non-chemophobic (and largely come from non-scientists!). Journalist Bart Van Bockstaele at Digital Journal (2008) posts a  response that includes a discussion of the confusion around the 'chlorine' nomenclature whilst dismissing all health concerns and properly pointing out that science hasn't shown chlorine to be carcinogenic anyway. (Note that some of the text is pretty similar to that found on the somewhat odd website World Carrot Museum).

At FarmProgress (2013), editor Jennifer Vincent admonishes those spreading misinformation, pointing out the public health efficacy of chlorinated water and describing how she corrected someone else who was spreading the carrot scare.

Joel Mackey of Z6Mag (2013) gives a somewhat disorganized response, but two items stand out: (1) he contacted the companies and investigated the matter himself; and (2) there's some neat Google trends graphs that show that searches for 'baby carrots chlorine' increased going into 2013.

Lisa Leake of the whole-foods effort 100 Days of Real Food (which sounds like it should be brimming with chemophobia) has a nice, accessible response in which she (1) made a point of looking up the relevant information and not just trusting 3rd party information; and (2) explained some of the layperson chemical misconceptions in the carrot-chlorine scare.

Other, shorter responses include those by Dr. Andrew Weill, Linda Golodner of the Water Quality & Health Council (she points out the health-protective benefits of low levels of chlorine in water!), Megan Loberg of Eat, Pray, Farm (who points out that even 'organic' producers use chemicals to wash carrots), and Consumer Reports, Moms Against Cooties.

And of course, anti-hoax websites such as Snopes and wafflesatnoon dismiss the claims (Snopes is itself a little chemically misleading, implying that neat chlorine is used to treat the carrots).

Overall, the responses are encouragingly NOT chemophobic in general. That's a relief to see, I think: engagement by the non-chemical community is probably more convincing to the general public than engagement by chemists (whether we like it or not).

Reading assignments, vol. 11

Communication of science

• Fans of ChemDraw and Pierre Morieux (who isn't??) should note that he has a second video.
• Science writing guru Khalil Cassimally provides a roundup of some useful tips for science writers.
• How accessible is your science? At Duke University, a genetics professor has proposed asking grad students to prepare a short video aimed at non-specialists to accompany their dissertations. This is a good idea, I would think; it makes science more accessible but also makes scientists work on (oft-neglected) soft skills.
• This satirical piece at The Pessimist (affiliated with Despair, Inc) about 'How to Work Like a Writer' was an enjoyable, quick read. The article gives a link to a Computerworld blog post about PowerPoint describing how to harness tactics used in writing to make presentations more effective. Though it's written for a technology/computer audience, it's worth taking to heart if you're a scientist, too.

Peer review and publication

• Neuroskeptic writes about the perhaps-sensical, perhaps-counterintuitive situation of stats quality in journals. It seems that high-impact journals (e.g. Science and especially Nature) are more likely than many low-impact journals to have insufficient statistical analysis. This may not be surprising, given the incentive for those journals to publish hyped-up work. Is there a similar trend in chemistry? I suspect that many medium-tier journals provide more solid experimental characterization and writeup than some of the flashier ones.
• Scientists unsatisfied with the status quo of journal publishing practices will find this development interesting. Biologist Michael Eisen has declared that he will publicly post each paper from his lab prior to journal submission for pre-publication, community-oriented peer review. It's a refreshing idea--hopefully others will follow suit.
• Derek Lowe points to the disappearance of the electronic-only open-access publication Journal of Advances in Developmental Research. Although he notes the relative unimportance of that particular journal, he brings up some points that open-access advocates should pay close attention to: predatory publishing and digital preservation. On a related note, Kevin Bonham writes about the premiere of a new prominent online-only journal, PeerJ.
• The story of the recent Xi Yan plagariasm endeavor (and the journal's lackluster, non-punitive response) has been written about with proper consternation by See Arr Oh. This kind of case is amazing, as it's the kind of thing routinely warned against in undergraduate writing courses and in orientation lectures at grad programs. Despite this, the plagiarists quite often win (for another plagiarist who 'won', check out Jonah Lehrer). For those with a spare half-hour, check out the Chemjobber/See Arr Oh podcast about plagiarism and peer review. Also, the comments section at the relevant In the Pipeline posting contains a discussion of the ethics of paper submission and whose fault plagiarism is (one commenter seems to think it lies with editors/reviewers and not  professors).
• In the last two weeks, two more entries came out at Blog Syn (a Pd-catalyzed site-selective C-H olefination and an IBX-mediated benzylic oxidation). Give them a read--and submit your comments if you have suggestions or questions! Blog Syn is supposed to be a discussion-oriented endeavor (and the further updated to Blog Syn #003 illustrate that, I think). On another note, despite broad support (including from more than one big-name prof), Blog Syn does have its critics. See particularly the comments section at In The Pipeline, which is brimming with vitriol (so much that Derek Lowe jumped in to defend Blog Syn).
• Science librarian Bonnie Swoger discusses common metrics of scientific publishing, such as h-index and impact factor, citing the importance of context in any comparisons. 

The job market

• Don't miss Chemjobber's Reddit Chemistry Jobs FAQ Part 1, which focuses on non-traditional jobs for chemists. As someone with a non-traditional career in mind, I found the post worthwhile and I second the recommendation of Dr. Lisa Balbes's non-traditional careers book. I found this post from the ancient literature (2011) relevant.
• Glen Ernst discusses the surplus of scientists in the job market. Accompanying his post is a graph clearly showing the recent (last ten years') trend wherein postdoctoral assignments have pulled ahead of jobs for new PhD graduates.

Research highlights

• Orac of Respectful Insolence makes a pointed criticism of anti-pharma, pro-alternative-medicine types by pointing out the aspects of alt-med hero Stanislaw Burzynski's work that would enrage his followers if Merck had done it.
• At Forbes, Steven Salzberg points out some upcoming legislation in Maryland that's being pushed by naturopaths seeking to equate 'alternative medicine' with evidence-based practices.
• Check out the always-interesting Alex Wild's public service announcement about the correct orientation of zombie ant fungus pictures. And the accompanying pictures, which are certainly cooler than anything you'll see in lab this week.
• I'm not well-versed in nutrition research, much of which gets criticized by scientists, but this piece by Scientific American intern Marissa Fessenden regarding the complicated mixtures of chemicals in food is certainly interesting. The proposal is that the complicated biochemistry of food may cause hormone-like signalling, which could lead to downstream effects. Chemophobes will be surprised to learn that food contains chemicals, of course.
• Those interested in chemophobia will find interesting this piece at Fire in the Mind which looks at the folks who oppose fluoridation of water. The phenomenon he describes--harnessing the "truthiness" of scientific studies while ignoring the real data/conclusions--is obviously not limited to fluoridation. The piece is an extension of Keith Kloor's post about how how many people simply dismiss facts.
• DNLee makes the case that a crucial way to improve STEM education is via of STEM-supportive parents and community members.
• I found two posts by Derek Lowe particularly interesting this/last week. The first was about the pharmaceutical industry and public perception--the point was that the industry doesn't need to care if people like it, as they'll still take medication. This suggests that those looking to change policies and practicis of the industry should do so by focusing on regulation and legislators, not on company-oriented protest. The second piece cast a skeptical light on an NIH claim that the causes of 4,500 diseases have been identified by research.
• It may be encouraging to science-minded folks that attendance at the Creation Museum is decreasing.
• At The Pump Handle there's a short piece about conflicts of interest, the EPA, and chromium.
• Keith Kloor writes about the tendency of the 'Freethinker' movement to shut down debate by dismissing religion as non-important. He maintains this as a problem of the 'New Atheist' movement--and I agree--since empirically, brute force never seems to be a particularly good method of conversion.
• Chad Orzel has a brief commentary on the academic cultural differences on who-teaches-what vs who-uses-what in physics and chemistry.
• Protein folding is important. NMR is important. So check out this writeup (and the original article) of a study in which temperature-controlled NMR spectroscopy was used to visualize protein folding (specifically, the folding of a DNA-binding protein from Enterococcus faecalis, a bacterium you will probably care a lot more about if you're hospitalized).
• Microbiology grad student K.D. Shives shares two opposite strategies for dealing with work-life balance in science grad school.

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. 9

This week's stuff is pretty heavily communication-themed; a lot of that is going around with the ScienceOnline 2013 deal having gone down. Anywhere, here's some general science enjoyment:

Chemophobia

• Chemophobia has been a major topic of the social-media-dom recently due to the ScienceOnline 2013 conference. In particular, Saturday marked the chemophobia-specific portion of the conference (Session 8A), which included a contemporaneous Twitter discussion via the hashtag #chemophobia. For those who had to work this Saturday (woo, columns, woo) the session notes have been posted online, and there's a quite impressive wiki entry containing an abundance of relevant and interesting chemophobia-related links and discussions.
• Michelle at The Culture of Chemistry has a thoughtful analysis of a recent chemophobia-rife New York Times story; she points to language and how it affects perception of concepts.
• Paul at ChemBark shares his tips and proposed strategies for how to combat chemophobia. It's a good read that sums up the origins and dangers of chemophobia pretty well. The recommendations are good, too: ACS should be doing its part (come on, guys!) but graduate students and faculty need to take it upon themselves to do outreach, regardless of the perceived waste of time. (That being said, the hostile intellectual atmosphere and the rough job market make spending any time on outreach seem unappealing to those trying to get as many ninth-author Tet. Lett. papers as possible published before graduating).
• Don't miss this latest Chemjobber podcast, wherein he discusses chemophobia and chemical communication with freelance writer/chemist Rebecca Guenard. 

Science communication

• See Arr Oh pokes fun at general features of chemistry blog entries.
• I found this guest post by Frank Swain both insightful and heartening. He writes of his UK-based BenchPress Project, which seeks, among other things, to have volunteer scientists give guest lectures to journalism students. The goal is to increase science and math (maths) literacy among journalists. I think it's a pretty important effort; even if scientists themselves try to do outreach and writing, journalists have the broadest audience and the means to reach them. Changes in science communication have to come from within both sectors!
• David Rubenson argues that despite a growing need for science communication, the quality of science communication has been in decline. He points to several symptoms (e.g. cluttered slides) and causative agents (e.g. overstretched researchers). I found significant his reference to two Nobelists who published infrequently (also, it reminded me of Daniel Day-Lewis).
• Always-interesting and often-controversial, Keith Kloor discusses the relative importance of general science literacy and news literacy. He argues for the importance of the latter (while not neglecting the former); in particular, he calls for news literacy to have a place in education. It shouldn't be an unfamiliar concept to scientists, who (should) be experienced at evaluating credibility of sources.
• UIUC anthropologist and science blogger Kate Clancy has an interesting piece (relevant to anyone who uses social media, especially those who write) about the pros and cons of filling out your online presence with your real identity.

Pseudoscience and denialism

• Notorious TV doctor Dr. Oz has received some negative limelight this week. Derek Lowe, for instance, responds to a recent New Yorker profile by commenting quite frankly (and accurately) on the gross degree of subjectivity and religiosity purveyed by Oz. Lowe is probably preaching to the choir, but he makes a very strong argument by pointing out that the institution of medicine, which is responsible for Oz's success, was decided not a post-modernist, choose-your-own-facts endeavor. Orac is not pleased, not surprisingly, and criticizes Dr. Oz's recent endorsement of homeopathy. In the vein of homeopathy, this video is relevant and amusing. Lastly, see this quick list of some downright wrong beliefs peddled by the good doctor.
• Moving from medicine to sports, read a brief account of some pseudoscientific nonsense from athletes.
• Amazingly, the teaching of evolution is still threatened by denialists the world over. It's a big problem in Turkey, for instance, where the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey has stopped publishing books that support the theory of evolution. Evolution has been in Turkey's crosshairs for a while. Meanwhile, here in the United States, we have Missouri House Bill 291 (titled the "Missouri Science Standard Act"). Read P.Z. Myers' breakdown of the legislation (which is in limbo). The bill is pretty frightening, pretty blantantly pro-creationism, and also terribly hypocritical. Also, Greg Laden points out a new anti-science bill in Arizona and the contrasting opposition to an anti-science bill in Montana.

Other

• This week Brandon Findlay has been running a series of posts about column chromatography. It's a good introduction or a good refresher, so give them a read.
• Derek Lowe has an interesting take on drug names (and how they've changed!).
• Neuroscientist Jessica Carilli makes the case for grad school in light of recent discussions of the unhealthy aspects of graduate study as well as the abysmal scientific job market.
• It's not infrequent to hear people complain about the uselessness of certain research programs, or at least to insist that they're too expensive (if the financial benefits aren't immediately obvious). Pete Etchells comments on NASA and the Curiosity rover, arguing against these viewpoints and giving some examples of how NASA technology has been repurposed for wide benefit.
• Maryn McKenna explores the poultry industry: specifically, how lack of transparency leads to unsustainable antibiotic use practices that contribute to widespread antibiotic resistance.

[Edit: I forgot Brandon Findlay's columns week! Urp!]

Reading assignments, vol. 8

Links and interesting topical stories from the week follow below.

Academia

• Scientific and writer DNLee of Scientific American gives a powerful account of the factors denying good STEM education to many students (namely, those of low socioeconomic status). It's a very important read, as it highlights many issues in science education (and education and science culture in general) that very often get ignored. 
• At Gene Expression, Razib Khan comments on affirmative action and science. He's largely dismissive of it, saying science doesn't need cultural diversity per se (with a caveat that such diversity is valuable from a social perspective). It's a worthwhile read; only the myopic would be reluctant to admit there is a rather skewed demographic makeup in science relative to the entire population.
• Derek Lowe has a commentary on an ACS Med. Chem. Lett. opinion piece regarding the role of academia in drug discovery. It's worth thinking about, especially to those interested in science funding or science policy. The case can really strongly be made that academia can not replace pharma as a productive drug production vehicle, but the decoupling from financial risk means academic labs can push innovations that are potentially high impact but not necessarily profitable.

Scientific representation and misrepresentation

• This Sceptical Chymist guest post by PhD student Fabian Carson about presentation skills for scientists is very relevant to the current state of chemistry talks (let's face it: most chemistry talks are terrible; even big-name speakers with high impact research can give eye-glazing accounts). The points are concise and should be common knowledge, but presentation skills aren't taught very much and so I'd bet that many scientists don't know this stuff or just don't care. One caveat: Carson recommends Prezi. I heartily encourage you to never, ever, ever touch Prezi. It's garish and terrible. Don't do it. 
• On a related note, Khalil Cassimally emphasizes the importance of communication to the general public and announces a very exciting-looking science communication workshop for grad students, titled "Communicating Science." The workshop will occur this June in Cambridge, MA, and registration is free!
• A couple posts here can be further sub-categorized to "responses to chemophobia":
• Professor Janet Stemwedel uses breadmaking as a vehicle to combat chemophobia. This is a good spin on chemicals and food, and it's particularly relevant given the quite explosively diarrheic chemophobia that tends to emit from the "foodie" community. 
• See Arr Oh gives his thoughts on some current negative media attention on brominated vegetable oil. As with any scary-sounding chemical, BVO has received some arguably warrantless attention from people who think they're health-conscious. 
• On his blog The Simple Candle, chemistry professor Stephen Prilliman encourages reclaiming the word "chemical" from its widespread negative connotations. He presents a Twitter strategy to do so.
• See Arr Oh also points out to us a very embarassing TOC graphic from MedChemComm. 
• In light of recent instances of scientific fraud and plagiarism, the finding that scientific fraud may have a male bias is interesting and relevant.

Chemistry job market

• Glen Ernst comments on a 1979 article from C&EN bemoaning an impending surplus of chemistry PhDs exceeding the number of available jobs. As Glen points out, "non-traditional" here meant not being a university professor. Today, the scope of "traditional" careers has broadened, but the employment outlook seems bleaker. Still, it's an interesting insight from the late 70s.
• I found this interview of ChemDraw wizard (and recently-hired Perkin Elmer employee) Pierre Morieux by Chemjobber quite interesting. It's a neat career path, and a cool story of how social media and online networking can land you a job. At the same time, comments imply that some chemists think it is overkill (and perhaps a telltale sign of the job market) that a long PhD and a competitive postdoc do not result in a "traditional" job. (I'd caution that non-"traditional" careers aren't  necessarily fallbacks and can be more rewarding than the big-name jobs; I'd also like to point out that many people in many professions change career paths many times!). 
• At Chemistry World, economist Paula Stephan has some perhaps-controversial, perhaps-obvious (depending who you ask) points on the PhD glut. She likens grad school to a pyramid scheme, where the focus of grad school has shifted from producing quality scientists to producing PI-promoting research. She has a series of thoughtful recommendations for improving graduate education. Derek Lowe notes the article and comments on the proposal to increase permanent lab staff (i.e. how to fund it?).
• Chemjobber has some commentary and depressing statistics on the job market and unemployment rate for chemists (spoiler: it's worse than the average rate for bachelor's degree holders).
• Don't miss See Arr Oh and Chemjobber's podcast on amusing interview stories.

Other

• This is a must-watch: several grad students from UC Berkeley do a eukaryotic microbe-based parody of Gotye's "Somebody I Used to Know." Be prepared to be singing it to yourself for a while.
• A lot of people have been writing about malodorous affairs this week. First, Derek Lowe compares and contrasts a massive mercaptan spill and a large-scale goat cheese fire. The Chemistry World Blog covers the matter as well. Then, Sarah Everts at  C&EN's Newscripts explores the history of deodorants and the biochemical basis for their need. Finally, at The Curious Wavefunction, Ashutosh Jogalekar describes the chemistry of smell and some fascinating anecdotes--read it! This post by Breanna Draxler at Discover talks about the biochemistry of odor recognition.
• Check out these videos of rotifers and other microorganisms. Really cool stuff! 
• Breanna Draxler writes about a paper published recently in Science in which researchers stored a little under a megabyte of hard drive data in DNA and retrieved it with perfect fidelity. It's been talked about for a while, and this instance happens to be faster and more accurate than previous attempts. It's a very, very cool thing---DNA is about as compact as you can get for reliable data storage! One might speculate, then, on the potential evolution of the first music-pirating bacteria.
• Keith Kloor has an important post commenting on another important post (Steven Novella). Both discuss why science is not persuasive; though data and statistics are logically compelling, we are fighting a reliance on heuristics and anecdotal evidence that is likely ingrained due to evolutionary advantage.

Reading assignments, vol. 7

No weekly link roundup last week due to the #GradMentalHealth discussion, but they resume below. Some pretty interesting stuff!

Perception of science

• Science News For Kids offers up several portraits of scientists, showcasing the importance of their work alongside their real-life interests. It's a pretty cool piece; things like this should be more common. Break stereotypes!
• For better or for worse, much of the public receives its knowledge of science through fiction, including crime dramas, medical dramas, and science fiction thrillers. That's given some false expectations. So it's interesting that the Washington Academy of Sciences has introduced a seal of approval to indicate they've thoroughly reviewed books and found the science within to be accurate. Neat concept!
• At Newscripts at CENtral Science, Sophia Cai summarizes a MIT-based web series about chemistry students. Give it a watch!
• Alex Stein has a very thorough link roundup on various sources regarding genetically-modified crops (sometimes referred to, usually biophobically, as GMOs). Included are aspects of media coverage, safety and economic research, and perspectives of scientists.
• Neuroscientist Zen Faulkes has a short but thought-provoking piece on social classes within science. It's worth considering; we see social stratification in chemistry between disciplines, within disciplines, geographically, and even between generations.
• I like writing about chemophobia, but it's important not to forget biophobia! (Is that a real term?)

Science writing

• Blog Syn is a go! This has already been covered all over the chemblogosphere, but it's worth repeating. Stay tuned as the workings and innards of Blog Syn get finalized. On a related note, Ash Jogalekar has written a post at Scientific American describing the GPCR Network as a model of open, collaborative research. It's really interesting, and one of the few examples where one could use the word "synergy" without rolling one's eyes.
• Via a carefully constructed example, Khalil Cassimally discusses scientific prose, general-public prose, and why the disconnect between the two is still relevant.
• Ben Morris argues for the obsolescence of academic journals. He puts in bullet-point format some key issues of the publishing industry discussed recently among scientists, especially in light of controversies including Elsevier's support of SOPA and the high fees ACS charges for journal access.
• It's been an interesting week as the #upgoer140 tag has abounded on Twitter. Inspired by this xkcd comic about describing technical concepts with the 1000 most common English words, numerous people have been accordingly describing their jobs (Stuart Cantrill describes being an editor; Derek Lowe describes medicinal chemistry; See Arr Oh describes organic synthesis and a lot of people participate in the comments; Chemjobber describes process chemistry; etc.). Even though it's funny to do so, I think it's also important. If you can't describe what you do thusly, do you really understand what it is you're doing or why? (If you want to give it a try, use the Up-Goer Five Text Editor).
• Science librarian Bonnie Swoger, inspired by #overlyhonestmethods, comments on those elusive journal articles that everyone cites but no one can get a copy of. Also, she highlights the importance of actually reading articles before citing them.

Research highlights

• From Quintus at Chemistry-Blog comes an account of a synthetic analogue of the ribosome. The authors (see publication in Science) used the technique to produce milligram quantities of a peptide! This was also covered in C&EN and by See Arr Oh.
• Derek Lowe gives a thoughtful perspective on an article summarizing the state of the field of "virtual screening". Worth a read for anyone interested in med-chem.
• I'm not usually a fan of reading about or listening to total syntheses, but B.R.S.M. gives a pleasant account of Shair's total synthesis of (+)-hyperforin.
• Bacterial toxins are interesting things! Check out this write-up on a PLoS Pathogens paper on toxins produced by C. difficile (nasty secondary infection common to those taking heavy loads of antibiotics). Warning to the it's-not-interesting-unless-I-can-column-it-and-solve-the-NMR-spectrum folks: the toxins in question (TcdA and TcdB) are enzymes and not small molecules. 
• Some intriguing research relating to rapid diagnostic of bacterial infections has been highlighted at Scientific American. The authors used secondary electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (SESI-MIS) to analyze breath samples for volatile organic compounds; they could correlate MS profiles to specific infections. It's an interesting idea; given the ability of bacteria to change their metabolism quite flexibly, I'd like to see how many false positives/negatives show up in actual trials.

Other

• Paul at ChemBark talks about how to get people to wear their gosh-danged goggles. He found that letting students customize their equipment led to a sense of ownership--kids saw them as their accessories rather than required/annoying items. Chemjobber shares his thoughts on the matter (and I personally find the merit badge comment amusing).
• Scientific American writer Janet D. Stemwedel writes about language regarding gun control and CDC research; she discusses the fact that many legislators want to prevent CDC/NIH research from influencing actual policy. This is relevant to areas outside gun control, of course, including chemical regulation and environmental policy. A choice quote: "legislators would rather be able to make policy unencumbered by pesky facts about how the relevant pieces of the world actually work."
• At The Worst Things For Sale, Drew points out some expensive bottled water that claims both to be "pure" and to be enhanced with fulvic acid. 
• Jean Flanagan at Sci-Ed (PLoS Blogs) has an important essay on the futility of educational research in scientific education. I found three of the presented points especially significant: (1) university and K-12 educators don't understand each others' environments, (2) practical research is looked down upon in educational academia, and (3) science education journals are most often behind paywalls, inaccessible to actual practitioners.
• From See Arr Oh comes a fun post prompting you to stop and listen to what your lab sounds like. 
• Forbes contributor Steven Salzberg (Fighting Pseudoscience) gives an important perspective on the fiscal cliff in the context of biomedical research. As it stands, the NIH is set to lose 10% of its already-stretched funding. Salzberg points out the tiny, tiny contribution of the NIH budget to the overall deficit and contrasts it to the high return-on-investment empirically shown for scientific research.
• American chemists, rejoice! The Royal Institute's Christmas Lectures are now available online.
• Artificial sweetener aspartame has been declared safe by the European Food Safety Administration after a review of the available safety data. However, since it's "synthetic" and a "chemical", what are the chances that anyone not already convinced of its safety actually reconsiders?

Reading assignments, vol. 6

First week of 2013 has rolled in. Some news from the week:

Public health

• Lead has received its due this week. In light of a MotherJones article by Kevin Drum correlating lead exposure with violent crime, Chemjobber has posted his questions and comments on the matter. Meanwhile, Deborah Blum writes an engaging account of the interplay between industry, science, and public health workers over the century in regards to lead exposure and toxicity. Of course, crazy-blog Age of Autism has found a way to turn this into chemophobic shrill regarding vaccines (it's like how everything turns into a Hitler argument on the Internet). 
• Maybe not exactly public health, but close: A lot of people suffer from celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder resulting in intolerance to gluten. It's an inherited disorder and has significant consequences for dietary choices. I thought this report in C&EN was interesting; researchers have engineered bacteria to display peptides randomly, then selected for peptides which bound hitherto-unknown antibodies in celiac patients. Read about it in the original article!
• This article at ScientificAmerican highlights an interesting find related to drug resistance.

Social media and science

• In what I call "Blog Syn" (after "Org Syn", aka Organic Syntheses, the journal that ensures procedures are reproducible before publication), the blogging/Twitter community has engaged in a sort of post-publication peer review of a recent JACS article. The original paper, which describes the deceptively simple use of Fe-S clusters in the synthesis of heterocycles, is currently an ASAP in JACS. See Arr Oh drew attention to the paper; subsequently, another chemist tried the procedure, giving only traces of the desired product. After a JACS editor noticed, See Arr Oh contacted the authors, and as of the time of this writing, no response was given. All this before the article was assigned a page number! This is closely reminiscent of the NaH oxidation post-publication headscratching a few years ago. It'll be interesting to watch; this kind of stuff has important implications for modern publication and peer review.
• Razib Khan, of Discover's Gene Expression, opines that the blogroll is dead and/or useless, having been functionally supplanted by readily available RSS readers. Meanwhile, at Collide-a-Scape, Keith Kloor highlights a revealing finding, published in Science, that readers of science writing are increasingly influenced as much by article comment sections as by article content. Concerning, given the number of crazies who like to troll the science. Note that the intro to the Science paper reads like it was written in 1994. 
• Not exactly science, but still interesting: Scott Huler notes the increasing use of Twitter and other social media outlets in disaster relief efforts and emergency scenarios.
• In a New York Times piece, Mary Ann Giordano notes that scientific topics have recently been popular on scientific media. This is probably due in part to excellent outreach efforts by NASA and other groups. Good news for scientists, and encouraging: outreach is worth it.

Public perception of science

• Genetically-modified crops are controversial in the public eye. William Connolley responds to what he sees as some besides-the-point or obvious questions posed last week by anti-GMO activists. The GMO dialogue never really seems to change (much like the autisim/vaccine dialogue). Meanwhile, Keith Kloor weighs in on the public misinformation about GMOs.
• Keith Kloor writes of a surprising similarity between the Republican Party and environmentalists: a lack of diversity. This obviously hurts public perception of the environmental movement, which is often seen as a mouthpiece of the well-off who don't understand the needs of the impoverished people who depend on natural resources (i.e. Appalachia, much of Africa, etc.).
• Both Keith Kloor and Derek Lowe discuss the recent turnabout of prominent environmentalist Mark Lynas, who for a long time fought GM technologies in agriculture but now is in favor of them.
• This excellent Q&A between Keith Kloor (a lot of him this week) and Daniel Sarewitz touches on a key issue in the science/politics/culture intersection. Sarewitz urges that while scientists should participate in political processes, transparency on clearly political issues is vital. 
• A Guardian column by Dean Burnett discusses the negative reaction by many to a childrens' TV show that portrayed vaccines as the safe and necessary public health measures they are. It's a really entertaining (and frustrating!) read.
• See this guide (as described by Justin Gillis) to the current state of climate change science. Useful for scientists to have; inevitably you'll have the climate change talk with a non-scientist friend.

Academia

• A recent commentary on Forbes describing being a professor as the least stressful job has drawn criticism. The article is pretty myopic, honestly. But it's refreshing that the author, upon receiving numerous contrarian comments, posted an addendum. However, there's still been a sustained social media response, including this detailed "real look" as well as this excellent analysis. Additionally, a list adapted by HuffingtonPost from CareerCast describes what they say are the least stressful jobs. This illustrates a cultural stereotype of professors that probably stems from the humanities.
• Interestingly, Bengu Sezen (who will be described in research ethics courses for decades as a shining example of what not to do) has secured a university position. What.
• Over at ScientificAmerican, Hada Shema discusses the numerous problems with using citation analysis and related metrics in evaluating influence of researchers. Of course, this doesn't stop meaningless lists such as this from being published. Citation analysis will probably remain quite popular, because it's easy.
• This still counts as academia (just not university): last week I mentioned Indiana Senator Dennis Kruse's push to allow creationism in Indiana schools. Now he's pushing to make recitation of the Lord's Prayer a part of the school day.

Other

• Everyone stay tuned; this week Chemjobber and I will be having a dialogue exploring whether or not graduate school in chemistry is bad for your mental health. It starts tomorrow (Monday) over at Chemjobber. 
• Derek Lowe discusses a recent paper on the nature of high-throughput screening collections. Not surprisingly, HTS collections are often narrow and biased; is this just because of synthetic tractability or is it also peacocking by the suppliers? Not surprising; HTS can be controversial, as some people think it hasn't nearly lived up to its promise, but others say it's vital. 
• This is cool for the art-inclined: some surrealist illustrations from 1970s textbooks by artist Karl Nicholason. Biochemistry figures still look like that.
• See Arr Oh points out some delightful chemophobia you can buy at Target
• Photographer and scientist Alex Wild points out why photographers shouldn't pretend to be biologists (click through!).  It's facepalm-worthy here, but also concerning: so much research is denounced publicly as "obvious" because people are willing to assume they know things based on "common sense". This kind of illustrates the concept.

Decaf is no way to treat a human

Caffeine; aka Tree-of-life.

Coffee is important stuff.

Recently our chemistry department held a research symposium. A series of morning talks, lunch, and afternoon talks. Each series of lectures was punctuated by a brief coffee/stretch break, in which a hundred or so zombified chemists lined up single-file to the lone coffee dispenser. With a simple push of a button, each of us received, like holy communion, our ration of liquid alertness.

The cups were tiny, but the coffee soon ran dry. The caterer had not, for some reason, adequately estimated our caffeine needs, and thus disgruntled students and postdocs pressed and re-pressed the dispenser button with forlorn faces.

Our organic area chair was not pleased. With the assistance of some choice vocabulary, he expressed wonderment at the incompetence of the caterer.

"There's still some decaf," I pointed out. "We could just drink a couple thousand cups of that." (The decaf had not been touched, being functionally useless).

He chuckled. "There is some caffeine left over in decaffeinated coffee." Then an aside: "You know how they remove it? They market it as nature's effervescence.* But there's nothing natural about supercritical carbon dioxide."

For various reasons, typically health-related, there is a demand for decaffeinated coffee. The first industrial decaffeination processes used benzene (yikes). This method has fallen out of favor; the current most popular methods include ethyl acetate extraction, dichloromethane extraction (hello), water/charcoal, or supercritical carbon dioxide.

Amusingly, ethyl acetate extraction is referred to as "natural". In fact, a lot of coffee sources like to tout their  "natural" methods.  The popular Swiss Water Process, for example, is touted as "100% chemical-free" by many coffee dealers (despite rumors that the company employs a solution of aqueous dihydrogen monoxide). Caribou Coffee subscribes to this line of chemophobic nonsense.

Although it's tea and not coffee, Numi offers an amusing and confusing account of their "organic decaffeination process":

We use an organic CO2 process to decaffeinate our teas called "Effervescence." The tea is placed in a pressurized chamber and Carbon Dioxide, an inert gas, is pumped in and locks onto the leaves, extracting caffeine from tea leaves. This process does not leave any chemical residues and maintains antioxidant levels and flavor quality (in other processes, polyphenols are removed). This is the only chemical-free decaffeination method that does not extract flavor or health properties.

Apparently carbon dioxide isn't a chemical. And it's inert (haha, joke's on you, everyone who's made carboxylates from organolithiums and dry ice!)? And they don't mention that the carbon dioxide is a supercritical fluid and not a gas, pressurized at several hundred atmospheres. But that would sound too much like a chemical, and chemicals are bad.

Altogether, "decaffeinated" is a bit of a misnomer. It's not caffeine-free. It's caffeine-deficient. Some caffeine still remains (this should come as no surprise).

A normal (i.e. useful) cup of coffee contains about 110 mg of caffeine (or more, or less, depending on brew method and whatever source you're looking at). Decaf contains up to around 10 mg (or as little as 2 mg; it depends, I guess). So via some quick computational methods we can say that there are 11 cups of decaf to one cup of real coffee (or 55 cups if you have 2 mg in a cup). Call it ten for sig figs' sake. That's about as good as you'll get.

So don't worry. Chug anywhere from ten to fifty-five cups of decaf when your departmental seminar runs out of regular and you'll be good to go. But since that's 1.9 to 10.3 quarts (1.8 to 9.8 liters) of liquid (a common guideline is a max tolerance of about 1 liter of water per hour max), you may just have to sleep through that materials chemistry seminar.

* This may occasionally also refer to the use of 'sparkling water', which is not natural, either.

At least they call water a chemical

"Organic" sea salt (is it chemical-free?)
Credit goes to Drew for discovering
this on Amazon.

Chemophobia is an acknowledged problem with the general public and mass media, as evidenced by chemical-free chemistry sets, the famed and oft-repeated dihydrogen monoxide hoax, labeling of myriad products as 'chemical-free', confusing regulations about chemistry students being barred from working with any chemicals due to safety, and general ignorant wincing from major media outlets at anything that might have "um" in the name.

The public doesn't like chemicals, even if they don't know what they are.

So when in my news feed appeared an article referencing a "chemical game of chicken,"* I was quite surprised to see that the chemicals in question were salt and water (how interesting, given that Caribou Coffee, for instance, touts water as the chief ingredient in its 'chemical-free' decaffeination).

So what is this game of chicken? It's one of those hyped-up articles that come out a couple times a year to the effect of "look what stupid thing all teenagers are doing! HOW CAN YOU PROTECT YOUR TEENAGER?" (e.g. vodka eyeballing).

This round of media hype stems from Detroit; the idea is that teenagers are putting a layer of salt and a layer of ice on their skin. From HuffingtonPost:

Detroit doctors report that some area teens are partaking in dangerous trend: a "chemical game of chicken" that can result in permanent damage to their bodies. 

In the game, which is called the "salt and ice challenge," teens burn their skin by applying ice to a layer of salt on their skin and holding it for as long as possible. 

CBS News reported that adding salt can drop the freezing point of ice as low as 0 degrees Fahrenheit, resulting in severe injuries to the skin, including frostbite.

So teenagers are hurting themselves, but let's get to the real issue here: how are reporters covering the science behind the phenomenon? Let's look.

What does CBS News say about it? From their coverage:

The challenge is so painful because of the chemical processes involved. Typically water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, but adding salt causes the freezing point to drop as low as 0 degrees. When applying ice, energy is pulled from what's nearby - in this case, heat from a kid's skin. While "competitors" fight the urge to drop the ice, they risk further damage in the form of blisters or second-degree burns, or frostbite.

The science is a little off here; I don't know why 0 degrees was chosen as the arbitrary low point, since a typical ice/salt bath can achieve -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit). It depends on amounts and how cold the ice itself is. Maybe that's just nitpicky, though.

What gets me is the third sentence: "When applying ice, energy is pulled from what's nearby - in this case, heat from a kid's skin." The sentence itself reads pretty awkwardly. But it also makes it sound like putting the ice on the salt causes the salt (or the ice) to pull heat away. In reality, as mentioned before, the salt has two functions: (1) it lowers the freezing point of water and (2) lowers the temperature of the water by endothermic dissolution.

Point (1) is crucial. The ice itself is cold (below the freezing temperature, most likely). But it's cold water that is more dangerous, since heat transfer is more efficient between a surface and a fluid than between two surfaces (that's why we use oil baths to heat reactions, and why we put water in ice baths at all).

A Fox article from Kansas City has some fun quotes. For instance:

Associate Professor of Chemistry at Park University, Donna Howell, said with just pure water under the conditions of a test she conducted, the water started crystallizing at point-three degrees Celsius. She said add 30 percent of salt to the water, and the freezing is well below negative 10 degrees Celsius. 

“So what they have in their hands, is well below negative 10 and that’s enough to give you pretty serious frostbite,” she said. 

Howell also said keep in mind, the kids who have tried this are putting pure salt on their arms, and not just 30 percent.

Here the reporters simply butchered the concept of concentration, which is something the public doesn't understand (see the abundant use of "pure" as a marketing term for chemically impure items). If the kids were putting "pure salt" on their arms, that'd be pretty safe, because there'd be no water/ice.

There's a treasure trove in this article from Detroit, however: The opening line from a Detroit-area news network's coverage is particularly horrifying (yes, the comma is in the original):

You know what salt does to ice on a snowy road, It causes a chemical reaction.

No... it doesn't. Dissolution is a physical change, not a chemical change; it's certainly not a chemical reaction. Simply put, physical changes can be reversed by physical means (that's the case here; the water could be evaporated off to give the salt again in its original form).

The carnage continues:

When you combine salt and ice on skin, it does damage to living cells and tissue.

Again, this isn't strictly true. Heat transfer does the damage. This requires sufficient salt/ice and a certain amount of time; it's not that salt and ice pop together and give off a red-brown death gas that begins eating skin. The same effects can occur from any coolants, really.

But my favorite line is this (I've put the entire thing in bold):

Because salt and ice are common every day items, they can't be legislated under lock and key, they can't be hidden away, there is no black market for them.

I love that the writer of the article elevates salt and ice to the level of guns, smallpox, or methamphetamine, as if our first response to reading that a couple teenagers had made a YouTube video would be to write to our Congresspeople, demanding that our voices be heard until sodium chloride and solid dihydrogen monoxide were regulated. I have visions of a salt black market in which perspiration would be evaporated and sold, giving a new meaning to sweatshops. And bans on freezers; only licensed institutes (closely watched, of course) would be trusted with the task of making and using ice (also known as solid water or frozen condensed steam).

Those dangerous chemicals.

* By "chemical game of chicken" we usually mean grad school.

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".