Mental Health Dialogue: 2017 Edition (part 2)

Note: this post is a response in a dialogue between Chemjobber and I on grad school and its effects on mental health. Yesterday's post can be found here.

Dear Chemjobber:

I had to do a double take at the calendar when you mentioned we were due for a refresh of this conversation on mental health in graduate school. But, somehow, lo and behold—it's 2017.

For me, things have been mostly good. My grad school projects ended up coming out of seeming oscillation into something resembling a stable thesis (bio updated to "Vinylogous was a graduate student..."). Add that on to a bunch of "life" events, and that's my 2015-2016.

Graduate school can be (and was) stressful, but so is the world beyond, I guess. For all the faults of our pressure cooker academia, it can be a source of insulation or distraction from alternate stresses (e.g. job market uncertainty, figuring out how healthcare works when you're not on an assistantship, dealing with the consequences of everyone you know aging, etc.). And some of those grad school stresses, it seems, do carry over, too.

All in all, I might do it again if I had to go back. But let's talk.

The state of things

You asked how the field has progressed:

How are we doing? I think academia might be doing better than two years ago about these issues, but I'm not sure. What do you think?

Has the mountain been nudged? As you might guess from that, I'm not really sure that much has changed, on a grand scale, in chemistry graduate education itself in the last four years.

I don't think individual departments are likely do so much without concerted pressure. Take for instance, the clamors for safety reform around Patrick Harran's tragically negligent supervision of Sheri Sangji. In 2014, prior to the resolution of the corresponding court case, departments were pretending to care more about safety—getting professors and students more actively involved in formulating solutions, giving lip service to "task force" initiatives, etc.

But of course, when Harran was able to escape a guilty plea and pay less than two weeks' salary as a token gesture to a burn center, departments realized that they weren't going to be held responsible, and they quietly dropped the matter. (Maybe not all departments, granted.)

Mental health is going to be similar. I don't see a clear path going forward that would encourage change. There's a massive collective action problem that still persists. And it's even trickier than chemical safety—there's more vagueness, less accountability, fewer particularized harms.

What have I seen? I haven't noticed much systemic change on the side of departments or PIs themselves. I did see a few individual PIs get mellower and more understanding—but over the course of five years, that can happen anyway.

I also did see someone announce on social media very recently that they were leaving graduate school, and in particular, they said their advisor's management syle was abusive. I don't know that you would be as likely to see that said publicly 5-10 years ago.

I've also noticed a few people announce their decisions to leave grad school for other options (career changes or MS-level chemistry jobs). Reassuringly, the reception to those people on social media from peers, family, and friends has been very supportive. So if there is judgment, it is largely silent judgment. For what it's worth, I think this is important—the broader recognition that change is OK, the grad school system is flawed and exhausting, and everyone's got their own path to pursue.

Mark that down as "somewhat optimistic."

Blaming the screen

You asked how modern distractions might impact the daily grind:

Distractions: Do you think our modern times are responsible for some of the mental health difficulties that graduate students face? I don't think I was a paragon of mindfulness or presence in graduate school, but I think today's graduate student faces an array of distractions that are an order of magnitude larger than anything I faced. [. . .] I wonder if it’s something that contributes to deadline-related stress and stress that we might feel in graduate school? How did you deal with it towards the end of your time in graduate school?

This is a really interesting point. It's definitely a concern in grad school—some PIs go so far as to explicitly dictate in their group manual that there is to be no social media access during the day, among other approaches.

Truthfully, the instant gratification of the small miracle screens we carry around does make things harder. I often found it hard to get through close reading of long articles without impulsively pulling up Twitter every couple paragraphs.

But I wonder if these distractions are supply-side or demand-side (I suppose I mean—do today's sources and devices create distraction or merely serve as an outlet for distraction?)

For perspective, I've often tried to remedy my own distractedness by locking away my phone, or simply self-imposing a no-phone rule. Usually, though, after a while I find myself getting lost in other thoughts, snapping out of that to realize I've been mechanically skimming paragraphs. I remember having that same daydreaming-while-reading experience before I had a cell phone. (Maybe humans haven't really evolved to sit and read long texts).

So I'm not totally convinced that technology is a huge amplifier of distractedness. It might be. But maybe it's just a particularly visible outlet that highlights how easily distracted we are. I think it's mostly just convenient and comforting to reassure ourselves that we'd be so much more productive without today's distractions.

(I'm also generally skeptical of the borderline anti-millennial "back in my day..." wistful sentiments that seem to get tossed around in some spheres about the moral and work-ethic superiority of all adults north of 40).

As for how I've personally managed to conquer distractions? I haven't. Still a struggle. And definitely still a source of stress in my current position, as it was in grad school (to me, it seems that other people are much more adept at quickly digesting information, retaining it, and finishing things on deadline. Maybe they aren't--maybe that's related to the whole problem of being unable to objectively compare oneself to others--but it does feel that way).

That being said: to minimize the distraction of minutiae (i.e. all those pesky details in lab that are immediately important for today's experiment but undoubtedly distracting in terms of being able to think creatively or long-term), I think it was really helpful to (1) minimize weekends in the lab (even if your weekdays get busier; and (2) go on long drive on the highway a lot--several hours in the car without anything to do but think can be more productive than one might think.

The elusiveness of objective foresight 

You asked how we should be looking at the decision to leave grad school:

The “I Quit” Series: [. . .] I learned so much. I wasn’t surprised at how much people didn’t like graduate school (I think the people who really enjoy it are relatively rare), but I was surprised at how happy people were to have left. I haven’t made a solid count, but of the people who wrote in, most of them answered the question “Are you happy you left?” with a resounding “yes.” [. . .] I wish I had some way of forcing graduate students to confront the question of “should I leave?” with some kind of rational test. [. . .] What do you think? Are we looking at this wrong? Should we be encouraging people to stay no matter what? (Do graduate students need more ‘grit and determination’?)

Anecdotally, at least, I think more people who leave grad school are—if you ask them a year down the road--happy to have done so than are unhappy.

I saw more instances of this in the last few years than I expected. There were, interestingly, a spectrum of reasons-to-leave (ranging from voluntary to not) but also a spectrum of PI reactions (including one who was both understanding and supportive, and another who made his student's life as miserable as conveniently possible). But they're all (seemingly) happier now.

I think we can (as a community) probably emphatically agree at this point that (1) grad school is not everything; (2) too many people go to grad school, and you need to really want it; (3) no one knows going in quite what they're getting into; and (4) it's OK to leave grad school if it's not what you want to do.

I think we've also (as a community) had great discussions of alternatives and career options.

I think, moreover, that we (as a community) have increasingly brought up the stresses and downsides of grad school—the nebulousness, the power dynamics, the understated role of serendipity in success and failure, the disconnectedness.

I've also talked about the above to a lot of students who were either considering applying to grad school or who were visiting on recruiting weekends.

But I don't think a single one of them took my advice. (This relates to your desire for a rational self-imposed test).

It's a little puzzling. Given broader exposure to grad school problems, shouldn't fewer people be going to grad school? (Maybe there are—I don't have a handle on the exact numbers, but my impression is that the ranks of scientific PhD students are as full as ever).

My impression is that as humans we all suffer from profoundly terrible objective foresight. ("Maybe it'll be different for me," we think. It usually isn't, of course). And that's part of the grad-school-mental-health problem. The only people who might realistically make a substantial change (grad students themselves, acting en masse) are only in the system for a few years, and those there for longer (PIs and administration) have little to gain from changing anything.

Some structural changes in grad school might change this. Take grad student unionization, for instance. That, of course, is controversial, and it's far from obvious that it would fix this problem. (One common criticism is that it would turn the grad student/advisor relationship from cooperative to adversarial; but I think one has to be somewhat naive to think it's that simple, or that there aren't many adversarial relationships already).

Let's get political

So far (in this and prior dialogues), we've largely focused on: (1) graduate programs themselves; (2) the internal struggles of graduate students; or (3) finding support outside graduate school. I don't think we've much considered the role of some really external concerns—namely, current events and politics. And grad student participation in politics.

First, there's no reason that someone can't be politically involved or politically active and not also be a fantastic scientist. That should go without saying, but "politically active" often conjures up images of incivility and frothing at the mouth, but I think that's a stereotype used to deride those with the gumption to care about things that aren't just silica gel and transition metals.

Second, we're in an interesting time where there's a push for scientists to get more involved in politics (see, e.g., the still-contentious March for Science, or Prof. Michael Eisen's announced bid for Senate).

But why does it matter?

Grad students are enormously focused on narrow things. Even when focused broadly on a scientific sense, they tend to pour tons of energy into science. And as previously discussed, if they take the time to have an outside interest (say, soccer or politics) it's derided. But, of course, we all live in a broader world that organic chemistry plays only a minuscule role in. Sometimes there are graduate students and professors who are active in political advocacy and social justice. But from experience, this often (and unfortunately) elicits mockery from co-workers.

Political apathy, of course, is a luxury for the privileged who don't stand to have much taken away from them. (This class includes professors, who as much as they might gripe about funding, tend to have relatively secure jobs at largely tolerant institutions with typically diverse populations).

This here is only a qualitative observation, of course. But fields like law and medicine have graduate experiences with difficult study and long hours, like chemistry grad school. But in either, you tend to see more devotion to external, broad, society-level causes. (That's probably somewhat related to the nature of the work itself, of course). And there's stresses on mental health there, too, but I think they're largely different in kind. I do wonder if increased encouragement or acceptance of grad student political involvement (let's call it "public policy involvement" for those who sneeze at the word "political") might help foster a feeling of empowerment, or at least attenuate the nihilistic jadedness that you can smell when you walk some chemistry department halls.

It's difficult to clearly articulate the reasons for graduate student political involvement, I guess. But I do wonder if it would be a good thing (maybe as an extension of it being a good thing for grad students to have outside interests in general). What are your thoughts, Chemjobber? I'm interested in your take on whether graduate students would benefit by being more active in this area (isn't that in the spirit of "Broader Impacts?").

I also wonder about political involvement by professors. There's some prominent examples of quite conservative or libertarian chemistry professors, for instance, and I've always wondered the effects, if any, on their students (I hope there's very little)—especially when I see a Tweet that's arguably misogynistic or racist. These professors often, nonetheless, have fairly gender-balanced or racially-diverse groups. I wonder if that ever spills over... do students feel they aren't getting a fair shake when their politics don't align with their PI? Or are we good enough at compartmentalizing that we can separate that sphere from the work sphere, and just get our work done without it mattering? (I hope the latter).

And have you seen the news lately?

I also do wonder about how current events will shape the grad school experience going forward (and by extension, the stresses involved). Namely:

Healthcare "reform". A lot of grad students are on their parents' healthcare or a university insurance plan, but not all. But with the climate in Washington, it's conceivable to see coverage for mental health services shrink.

Funding cuts. A look at the planned 2018 budget reveals a $31 billion cut to the NIH, along with multi-billion-dollar cuts to the NSF and DOE's Office of Science. I can't see this having a positive effect on graduate student life.

The public and science. This isn't entirely new, of course, but the public seems to have a growing distrust for experts. Along with a political climate that seems to be gripped by a strong anti-intellectual movement, I wonder how decreased public faith in scientists and academics will shake out, and perhaps if universities will see even less support, requiring higher pressure on pools of students to produce work. (Related, perhaps, to funding cuts).

Wage and hiring freezes. Of course, there was the postdoc salary debacle and the federal hiring freeze. Neither are good, on their face, for postdocs (and misfortune often trickles downhill). Are we seeing more difficult career ladders for grad students?

Immigration and the Trump administration. This one is particularly worrisome. I had tons of great foreign colleagues in graduate school. Many of those people are having trouble finding jobs. Or they're dealing with an increasingly loud and vicious public discourse demonizing immigrants or demonizing Muslims. In essence, a graduate student who is foreign or Muslim is being subjected to all the normal mental health stresses of grad school but with the added ingredient of broad-scale xenophobia. (It's worth pointing out that in the recent 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision refusing to stay a preliminary injunction against the administration's de facto Muslim ban, the plight of foreign graduate students and professors played a central role in demonstrating the damage done by the order).

Anyway, not to leave this on a sour note, but I wonder what other recent or upcoming events might signal good or bad times ahead for graduate students and postdocs. (Or maybe nothing will really change at all).


Regards,

Vinylogous

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.

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".

Chemists who do other things

At Just Like Cooking, See Arr Oh pointed out John Kuhn, an NFL player with a chemistry degree and some internships under his belt.

Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV.
Source: Wikipedia.

What other prominent folks have had chemistry degrees?

Actor and martial artist Dolph Lundgren, of Rocky IV fame, has both a bachelor's and master's degree in chemical engineering. Frank Capra, director of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", had a chemical engineering degree as well. Ally Walker, who starred in the 1990s drama Profiler, originally intended to be a scientist or doctor and holds a biochemistry degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Iron Man co-star Terrence Howard at one point wanted to be a science teacher and was reportedly three credits short of a chemistry degree.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Source: Wikipedia.

Several political leaders have chemistry degrees. Margaret Thatcher is one example, as she studied X-ray crystallography and worked briefly as a research chemist (however, she clashed with the Royal Society and is not remembered fondly by many British scientists). Germany's Chancellor is Angela Merkel, who has a doctorate in physical chemistry. In the United States, John M. Deutch is a physical chemist who held prominent political positions in the Clinton Administration, including being the Director of Central Intelligence. Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann, developed the ABE (acetone-butanol-ethanol) process to produce the three chemicals by fermentation of starch. Additionally, Ignacy Mościcki was a physical chemistry professor who was a president of Poland.

Russian composer Borodin.
Source: Wikipedia.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a couple musicians. Alexander Borodin, the famed Romantic composer, was also a surgeon and a professor of chemistry. Borodin worked for Erlenmeyer and discovered the aldol contemporaneously to Wurtz (n.b. the timing of this is disputed). Bill Lipscomb was a 1976 Nobel Laureate and an avid clarinetist who befriended jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie. And Edward Elgar, the English composer of Pomp and Circumstance and Enigma Variations, was an avid amateur chemist who invented an apparatus for production of hydrogen sulfide.

Lastly, Drew, the author of webcomics Married to the Sea and Toothpaste for Dinner, writer of the hilarious blog The Worst Things for Sale, musician behind Crudbump and Kompressor, and novelist behind Veins, is a former industrial chemist.