Why Steve Strauss should stop hiring English majors and hire some scientists instead

Recently, a few people I know shared this column on Facebook. Written by Steve Strauss, a lawyer/author and self-described "small business expert", the short piece from the Huffington Post makes the case that English majors are pretty much the bee's knees. Strauss prefers to hire English majors for a variety of roles, as he explains:

I love English majors. I love how smart they are. I love their intellectual curiosity. And I love their bold choice for a major. Most of all, I love to hire them. 

A recent article by the great David Brooks in the New York Times about the changing nature of the Humanities in higher education just reinforced why, when given my druthers, English majors are my employee of choice. 

And the reason is not that I am a writer; I more consider myself an entrepreneur than anything else. I run a small business and the people I hire do a variety of tasks -- SEO, project management, social media, and so forth. 

For my money (literally and figuratively), for my needs, and I suggest the needs of most small businesses, English majors are easily the top choice when it comes to getting the type of teammate who can make us all better, as they say in basketball.

Strauss goes on specify some key traits apparently endemic to the English major population. These are: (1) English majors are smart and creative independent thinkers, more so than business majors; (2) English majors are bolder risk-takers than others; (3) English majors are always better writers; and (4) English majors are easy to work with.

I suspect many scientists will disagree. I take issue with the broadness of Strauss's assertions--though he never claims to have broadly surveyed skillsets of humanities scholars, his descriptors read like mere feel-good fluff. Yes, there are English majors who have those characteristics, and many English majors are successful. But "rigor" and "difficult assignments" are not essential traits of the undergraduate English experience.  While English may allow deep thinking, it doesn't absolutely require it, and it's certainly easier to skate through an English degree than, say, one in chemical physics or organic chemistry.

You see more chemists who also know literature than you see literary analysts who know molecular orbital theory. But isn't that just because science is more specialized? Well, yes and no. Individual fields of science certainly have their own jargon, methodology, and bodies of knowledge. But the scientific process is fairly universal, and you see people switch fields in their BS/PhD and PhD/postdoc transitions.

That all sounds harsh, of course, and borders on the increasingly-prevalent-but-misguided attitude of "cut the humanities, boost only employable fields". So to clarify: I like the humanities. I really do. I've always enjoyed literature and music (both production and consumption), and I think their study is vital for making a person more culturally aware and well-rounded. I have opinions on writers and composers. I was one of those people who didn't whine about general-education requirements interfering with "real" coursework. But assigning top general employability status to English majors overlooks a key group of students who, when successful, possess all the abovementioned skills and more: science majors.

The case for hiring science majors

As previously mentioned, Strauss touted the creativity of English majors and their ability to think analytically. Creativity is essential to good science as well; skilled researchers tend to be creative people who see alternate ways to solve problems. Moreover, scientists find solutions that work, based on reality and reproducibility. This clarification is important, because "analysis" means very different things in scientific and non-scientific circles. However, scientists are quite good at two things: (1) finding information; and (2) evaluating information.

Strauss also claims English majors are superior risk-takers. But scientists are too. They have to be. Good research is always at the edge of knowledge--which means it might not work. Bench time might be wasted. A six-year PhD might produce no results and lead to no job. Ideas might get defunded and banished to obscurity. Going to grad school is a tremendous risk. So is working for an untenured professor, or starting a brand-new project. So the advantage here again goes to scientists. Additionally, scientific risk-taking is grounded in reality--helpful for businesses.

What other employable traits do scientists tend to have? Work ethic: long hours are the norm and determination over long periods of time (ca. 5 years) is required. Versatility: the scientific method is employable between variant research areas but also to management and business decisions. Technical skills: this probably goes without saying, but intimate knowledge of scientific theory and technique isn't easily gleaned from Google. Even in non-bench roles, this can be quite important. Teamwork: whereas writing English papers is a solitary venture, lab research is done in groups, and collaboration between students and labs on the experiment or project scale is commonplace. Objectivity: whereas the humanities stress the voice and identity of the individual (subjectivity), science emphasizes minimization of bias. This is useful in risk assessment, evaluation, project design, etc.

All in all, I think science majors sound pretty employable.

What we can learn from our English-wrangling colleagues

The claim about English majors being superior writers is also worth examining. Do English majors write? Yes. Do they write a lot? Most of them. Do they write well? The good ones write academic papers well, but an increased vocabulary and flowery verbiage doesn't mean good communication. Of course, many English majors are good communicators, but the degree doesn't guarantee that. And not having an English degree doesn't mean you can't write just as well as someone who has one.

It's worth noting that significant differences exist between scientific/technical and academic (non-scientific) writing. In another life, I worked closely with undergraduate writing tutors. Most were English majors, and as a lot they were very intelligent. But all of them were horrid at actually helping science students improve their communication skills. The result was a continuous stream of frustrated chemistry students with half-mangled lab reports. The writing process is fundamentally different across the humanities/science divide, which makes me skeptical that the garden-variety English major would be good at writing in a technical or scientific context (where content is highly specific, highly technical, and verbal economy is vital). Some are good at it, but it's not because of Chaucer.

That being said, scientists themselves are very commonly awful writers. Those who deny this or think it's not important are simply either ignorant or delusional. Then again, scientists are perhaps more likely to be blunt and direct, which has its appeal. Regardless, it's probably good for budding scientists to take all the writing experience they can get and to pay attention not only to the facts of what they write but the organization and presentation. Clear communication makes ideas easier to sell, cuts down on wasted time, and improves work efficiency. The ability to write well (more than just JACS communications) can be a huge selling-point when building an employment skillset, as it extends to grants, business proposals, technical reports, and intellectual property claims.

A final anecdote.

A friend of mine switched from pre-med to business during undergrad and found himself in a business database systems class. The class entailed a team-based project wherein each group of students needed to create a database system for a local business. Several of the born-and-bred business majors insisted that the class was probably the most difficult in the university. Having taken two years of pre-med coursework, my friend pointed out the difficulty and rigor in the hard sciences, especially in independent research. Oh, no way, the business majors insisted, scientific research is just following recipes.

The piece is short, so it's worth reading.  Do also peruse the comment section, which is rife with people praising Strauss's words and/or correcting each others' grammar/diction. 

Chemical Fun from 1921

What's more fun than historical documents? Historical chemistry documents! From one such document: the following tongue-in-cheek paragraph appeared in the April edition of the briefly-published and mostly-otherwise-serious quarterly departmental (U of I) magazine The Illinois Chemist 1921, 5(3), 12.

The text (written out):

CHEMICAL FUN. Procedure (to be followed with extreme carelessness): Select several choice cut medium sized hydrogen ions from a bottle and scour until thoroughly clean. Wipe and dry carefully. Avoid handling. Lay aside. Now soak a few large chunks of metallic sodium in a beaker of distilled water and allow to stand quietly. In the meantime be collecting a pailful of cathode rays. Filter these, using suction. Beat them to a froth with two and three-quarters pounds of green radium (the red variety is highly unsuitable for this experiment). Now stir in the hydrogen ions, one at a time. Drain the sodium and put it in above mixture. Grind up with T. N. T. and put in a mortar and add all at once. Thus the mixture will become catalyzed. -- Voodoo, M. I. T.

Chemical fun, indeed. Sounds like a job for Blog Syn!

 

JACS comment section? Back to the future

It's been a very interesting couple of weeks in the realm of Blog Syn (the beginning of Blog Syn #003A has a roundup for anyone who hasn't been following). People across a number of blogs have noted the importance (or at the very least, usefulness) of chemists participating in social media and rapid web communication (indeed, even Phil Baran's lab has started a blog, despite hegemonic bias against blogging in the field of organic synthesis). 

How can chemists use social media to the greater benefit? Take, for instance, the first comment in Chemjobber's reply to the IBX+water conclusion. Polychem says (bold emphasis mine):

This work makes me think that every paper published on pubs.acs.org deserves its own comment section. I can imagine it being abused, but there may be some good insights by having essentially a wider peer review where you don't have to pay to print your rebuttal.
Good job Blog Syn people!

 Hmm... a comment section at JACS? Check out this 1996 editorial from the journal! For those stuck outside the paywall, an excerpt:

There is no question that digital computers have had a large impact on the publication of scientific research. JACS uses computers in the management of the journal data base and in production of the journal. Most manuscripts are now submitted in final form as floppy disks, and e-mail is often used for correspondence with authors and reviewers. Recently, especially with the wide accessibility and usage of the World Wide Web (WWW), interest has turned to electronic publishing, i.e., to the posting of manuscripts on the web rather than, or in addition to, producing a hard copy (print) journal. The advantages of electronic publishing include the faster appearance of a paper at a presumed lower cost than printing (with the attendant possibility of wider distribution) as well as the ability to provide materials, like computer programs, movies, color figures, and large amounts of experimental data, not available in the hard copy. Concerns about electronic publishing include the maintenance of the quality and integrity of the published literature, providing for the long-term archiving of papers, and assuring that financial support is available to carry out the needed peer review and maintenance of the archive. These points are discussed in a booklet available from ACS Publications: Will Science Publishing Perish?

Interesting that the ACS proposed lower cost and wider distribution--I wonder if that worked out that way? The last section of the editorial is also a fun read:

JACS Web Page -- An Experiment. The JACS web page (accessible via the ACS publications page at http://pubs.acs.org) displays instructions for authors, links to supporting information, and the table of contents for the latest issue of the journal. As an experiment we will also try out a section for selected correspondence and comments. Readers can submit, by way of a form available on the web page, scientific comments pertaining to recently published JACS papers. Authors will be asked to reply. Posting of comments will not be automatic. Comments for posting will be selected by the editors and they will not be sent out for review. There will be no appeals for comments not selected. Comments will not be published in hard copy or CD versions of the journal nor will they be archived. We hope these comments will generate interesting discussions and help amplify and clarify ideas and results published in JACS papers. They are not meant to discuss priorities or present still unpublished ideas or results. Additions and corrections will still be published in the printed version of JACS. We hope the level of discussion on the JACS page will be significantly higher than the average WWW newsgroup! This experiment will be terminated if the community feels it is not useful (or if it becomes too burdensome for the editors). At this time we cannot accept manuscripts submitted electronically for review; however, we are investigating the possibility of doing this in the future. As stated at the outset, the science publication field is evolving rapidly. The new possibilities are intriguing, but the community will best be served by an orderly evolution that involves the best features of both the print and electronic media.

It's quite revealing to see the difference between scientific publishing just 17 years ago (oh wow, 1996 was 17 years ago??) and now--after all, electronic submission is de rigueur not only for SI but for main text and for correspondence with reviewers.

More interesting, though: there was a comment section on JACS before the journal even started putting the manuscripts themselves online. Seems like unusually progressive thinking by the ACS!

But if you go to the JACS website now, there's no comment section. What happened to it? A search of editorials from the journal gives no relevant hits and a 2002 editorial discussing other web-based aspects of JACS makes no mention of it. Did it die a quick, fiery death?

Indeed, there's a lot of room for publishers to include the community in scientific discourse. Some do a little: Nature Chemistry, for instance, has a good metrics section that indexes blogs (but no comment section). The ACS journals don't have comments, nor do Taylor & Francis, the RSC journals, Elsevier, or PNAS.

Does anyone do comments?

Yes! Take a look at PLoS One (example article): they have comment section built in to a very slick web interface.

It'll be interesting to see how the face of scientific communication changes over the next few years.

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.

Stop using that word: Facile

Certain words tend to catch on in the scientific literature, such as "novel", which increased exponentially in usage starting in the 1980s. One of those catchy words is one that I previously* used like candy: facile.

Chemists like to describe reactions as "facile." By that, they usually mean easily-performed, smooth, or simple. You know, not much fuss involved. And indeed, that's one of the definitions (from the OED):

adj. (1) a. That can be achieved with little effort; straightforward, easy. In later used freq. in disparaging sense: contemptibly easy. b. Of instructions, a device, etc.: easy to understand or make use of; simple. c. Of a course of action, a method, etc.: presenting few difficulties.

That is the original, historical meaning. Another (more modern) definition carries a different implication (from the Oxford Pocket Dictionary):

adj. (1) ignoring the true complexities of an issue; superficial; or (2) (of a person) having a superficial or simplistic knowledge or approach

And if you type "facile" into Google, you get this immediately:

adj. (esp. of a theory or argument) Appearing neat and comprehensive only by ignoring the true complexities of an issue; superficial

Essentially, "facile" in modern usage (last century or so) has a negative connotation. And take a look at the synonyms for facile (Oxford again):

simplistic, superficial, oversimple, oversimplified, schematic, black and white; shallow, pat, glib, slick, jejune, naive

It's interesting to note that wiktionary has a chemistry-specific entry for "facile":

(chemistry) Of a reaction or other process, taking place readily.

Of course, language is defined by usage, so maybe I'm being picky here. But why not describe procedures as "straightforward", "robust", "easily performed", or any number of other, less ambiguous descriptors? (My intuition says those terms sound too common/"blue-collar" to many academics)

When did "facile" catch on? Well, from a crude PubMed search, it looks like the late 1990s was the tipping point (incidentally, PubMed makes it way easier than SciFinder to get data on this kind of thing. Sorry, CAS). Additionally, most of these references are (not surprisingly) from synthetic organic chemistry papers. See also this description of the two meanings of the word and their historical context.

The shrouded meaning of facile adds overlooked complication when authors start to invent words (after all, organic chemists are wont to derivatize things). There's a handful of examples from the literature that use "nonfacile" (which isn't even a word; go ahead, check the OED or Merriam-Webster).

Take this example from an otherwise-good trifluoroborate-preparation paper (Lennox, A.J.J., Lloyd-Jones, G.C. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51(37), 9385-9388. doi: 10.1002/anie.201203930):

Replacing MeOH with diethyl ether led to co-precipitation of 2a with other potassium salts (KF/RCO₂K etc.), thus making isolation of pure 2a nonfacile. Switching to MeCN kept trifluoroborate 2a in solution, but an excess of carboxylic acid (e.g. acetic or ortho-iodobenzoic acid) was still required (Scheme 2).

So if "facile" means "contemptibly easy" or "appearing neat and comprehensive only by ignoring the true complexities of an issue", what does "nonfacile" mean? Was isolation of 2a not contemptibly easy (just acceptably easy?). Did isolation merely appear difficult while really, under the surface, it was simple?

Stop using that word.

* i.e. before a reviewer pointed out the proper definition.

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.

Plagiarism and the role of publishers

Anyone who reads Just Like Cooking or Chemjobber is by now probably aware of the freshly-discovered plagiarism case wherein a 2013 Chem. Eur. J. article by Professor Xi Yan lifts, verbatim or nearly so, entire portions of a three-years-prior (2009) JACS paper by Professor Valérie Pierre. Reading the commentary, the plagiarism is pretty egregious. Additionally, comments and a further blog post by See Arr Oh have brought up more instances of plagiarism like this.

Of course, #spacedino is immediately brought to mind (for the uninitiated, that particular hashtag refers to the 2012 controversy where esteemed chemist Breslow, of Columbia University, was found to have submitted what amounted to essentially the same publication to multiple journals; it was only really caught because biologists took his lame ending joke seriously). After lengthy conversation on various media and social media outlets, the offending papers were retracted at Breslow's (and others') request (though initially he denied wrongdoing).

While the Breslow violation was aggravating and arguably wrong, the Yan violation is worse. I don't think that's a very controversial point to make, but it's an important one to recognize. The Breslow affair fell into what some categorized as an ethical grey zone; the Yan violation is in clear things-they-tell-you-from-day-one-in-university territory.

Rapid retraction is vital, I'd wager; thought many retracted papers still get heavily cited or believed, early correction is probably the best way to prevent such propagation. Once an article has been believed as true for a substantial period of time and gets included in dissertation of paper-introduction citation-vomits, less care is taken to check the original source and see the glaring retraction notice. Better to stop the train before it leaves the station.

I think this highlights the role of open and quick dialogue among scientists, along the same lines as Blog Syn. The ability to rapidly disseminate these issues when they are discovered can, ultimately, improve the quality of scientific communication. In a pre-social-media era, it was certainly easier to just assume a paper would slip by unnoticed. Not so much anymore; via Twitter, for instance, a wide audience can be quickly reached. See Arr Oh wrote that he has notified the two publishers (Wiley and ACS); it will be very interesting to see what action occurs.

Of course, a point could be made that such post-publication watchdog action shouldn't be necessary. Aren't these things peer reviewed? Alas, I think anyone with a healthy dose of realism is aware that a good bulk of reviewers put in the minimum conceivable effort in reviewing (consider the sheer quantity of bad Supplementary Information files). Usually, this is justified by a variety of factors, namely that reviewers are (1) busy and (2) unpaid. (And they aren't held accountable if the article is later retracted).

But hey, you know who are paid? Publisher staff. I'm a bit surprised that more journal editors haven't made a practice of submitting manuscripts to plagiarism detection software. There's many available; universities often have TAs use them to check undergraduate papers. One comment on Chemjobber's blog points out that Elsevier provides access to one such service, iThenticate, to its reviewers. One readily available service, eTBLAST, compares blocks of text to databases of scientific papers using the BLAST algorithms commonly employed in bioinformatics for sequence alignment. In short, many tools exist for plagiarism detection. So what's the deal, journals? A common claim of open-access opponents is that paywall publishers "add value" to papers by the publication process.

So why aren't all papers routinely submitted to these checks after peer review and before publication? Ideally, reviewers should do a thorough job vetting submitted articles and should be supplied with tools to do so. But publishers share that responsibility. If you can Cantrill an article, it shouldn't slip by.

(One caveat: I'm not sure about the journal coverage of many of the anti-plagiarism packages. eTBLAST, for instance, appears to have access to Medline and PMC, but doesn't seem to have many of the synthetic journals in full-text. That's from an initial assessment; I may be wrong. CrossCheck, the service powered by iThenticate, has a very wide list of included content, but interestingly, I don't immediately see ACS on the list). Is it possible that some of these illustrated issues just don't get picked up by the software?

Lastly, something that would be very interesting: how much scientific plagiarism occurred in the pre-software-detection era? That is, how prevalent were issues of plagiarism in the 1960s? If one took journals from the 1960s, for instance, and ran them through this software--what would they find? Is it more prevalent now? Is it less prevalent? When did scientific plagiarism mature? I suspect the issue is a very old one.

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. 4

The following are some interesting topics and posts from the last week or so. A lot of links, but they're pretty good.

Online education (i.e. MOOCs)

• At the Chronicle of Higher Education, George Washington University Dean Doug Guthrie criticizes Coursera, a for-profit company that partners with universities to offer massive online open courses (MOOCs). Guthrie insists that Coursera is a fad; "thoughtful interactions" do not occur; and educators are frequently creating a crowd, not a community. It's a valid point; online education has promise but very often falls short, even with the best of intentions. See also this other criticism/analysis of MOOCs.   While we're at it, if you really want to read more about MOOCs check out this year-in-review about MOOCs.
• In the midst of the recent surge in MOOC popularity, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is running an online Intermediate Organic Chemistry course, taught by educational specialist Michael Evans and Dr. Jeff Moore.
• Dayna Catropa and Margaret Andrews compare MOOCs to MOCCs (midsized online closed courses), predicting that MOCCs will replace MOOCs, as they provide an opportunity to monetize the online experience and deliver it to smaller groups.

Public health

• Antibiotic resistance is a serious public health concern, but a potential new class of antibiotics that take advantage of the dependence of certain pathogens on the thioredoxin system is displaying promise against MRSA, drug-resistant TB, etc. Malaria is also notoriously drug-resistant, and this press release details a surprisingly simple whole-plant antimalarial strategy that may be effective and cost-effecient. This stands in contrast to the widespread practice of synthetic, pure drugs.
• While we're on the subject of antibiotics, Katherine Harmon at ScientificAmerican writes on recent findings that amoxicillin is not only overprescribed but is ineffective compared to a placebo for most of its common applications. Add another one to the "no, seriously, stop giving out antibiotics like candy" file.
• Antibiotic use in agriculture is controversial, and Maryn McKenna at WiredScience writes on the FDA's reluctance to compel companies to disclose farm antibiotic use. On a related note, The Pump Handle criticizes a recent USDA decision to "modernize" poultry inspection; the author says that the new guidelines, which aim to speed up the inspection process, would threaten food safety.
• Personalized medicine has gotten a lot of recent attention as a strategy for fighting disease (particularly cancer). The general strategy is to target therapeutics based on a patient's genome. However, personalized medicine has its skeptics, and a commentary by Sharon Begley examines recent evidence that this approach may never be effective.

Scientific communication

• Terminology and jargon is integral to scientific communication and has traditionally been an obstacle to deaf and hearing-impaired people. Douglas Quenqua writes about crowdsourcing-oriented efforts at creating a sign language scientific lexicon.
• Both Chemjobber and Derek Lowe comment on a perplexing press release about Parabon's drug delivery technology that sounds more like a Michael Crichton novel. The press release's author has responded, as well, with a degree of consternation at the press release's negative reception. I think this exchange really highlights some concerning issues about scientific communication to a broad audience.
• University librarian Barbara Fister comments on how undergraduates struggle to learn how to do literature-based research. She posits that how we frame/present the task influences a student's perception of their own ability to complete it (just call it Finding Stuff Out). It's an interesting read; the philosophy is familiar to me from when I tutored writing. I think we can draw some parallels to how we teach scientific thinking and how the public perceives scientific writing.
• At ScientificAmerican, Khalil Cassimally lists some good practical guides for developing science journalists. There's about 11 of them listed; read and bookmark them! On a related note, see this post by Khalil about how science writers keep their notes organized.
• Chemist Phil Davis has listed his 17-years-deceased PhD adviser as a co-author on a paper. While it's good to give credit where it's due, don't all authors have to consent to publish? This just generally seems weird given the elapsed time.

The F word (funding)

• At the Chronicle of Higher Education, Indiana University president Michael A. McRobbie warns that the fiscal cliff may spell out serious damage to research universities. He makes the case that this would be perilous to the economy, as research drives innovation in engineering/manufacturing.
• The United States is not the only place where scientists are feeling the squeeze of a scant funding environment. Nature gives an account of Spanish scientists who protested their government's reductions in science funding (39% drop since 2009).

Scientific philosophy

• On HuffingtonPost, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake writes a commentary on the arrogance of modern science, criticizing materialism and insisting that dogmatic thinking is "crippling" modern science. I disagree with most of what he says; it's overly dramatic, simplistic, and feels like it's pandering to the pseudoscientist crowd (as well as an advertisement for the author's new book). But it's worth reading; is this a pervasive viewpoint?
• For the philosophically inclined, read this. (tl;dr = is science tool-driven or idea-driven??).

Other

• B.R.S.M. has a good post examining a recent essay by Kappe in Angewandte regarding "non-thermal microwave effects" (spoiler: they probably don't exist). See also a simultaneous piece by Tom W. Phillips over at A Chemical Education.
• A criticism on reaction norm about feeble efforts by departments to insist they're preparing students for "alternative careers". The author states that departments and faculty are not in touch with or interested in actually preparing students for non-traditional careers.
• P.Z. Myers gives an account of a saddening (and infuriating) case of a biologist illegally baiting and killing an aging jaguar, then covering it up.
• Really cool guest post at Scicurious about the basics and history of X-ray crystallography.
• STEM education has gotten a lot of attention and advocacy recently, but Gwenn Schurgin O'Keeffe touts the arts as essential to fueling creativity and cross-fertilizing other skillsets.
• Deirde Lockwood, a chemical oceanography graduate student discusses the increasing time-to-degree for chemists at CENtral Science. She thinks four years is too short, and limiting programs to shorter periods of time would breed easier projects and softer chemists.
• Ronald Breslow dancing to Gangnam Style? Yes, please.

Blind to colorblindness

Since venturing into the more biology-oriented side of organic chemistry, I've noticed something in chemical biology and biochemistry papers that really isn't a problem in synthetic journals. Color. Biologists/chemical biologists love using color. And that makes sense; the meaning of a figure can be more easily conveyed by dyanamic coloration. Consider the following micrograph from an ACS Chemical Biology article (DOI: 10.1021/cb300171p). The figure depicts measurement of zinc levels in mitochondria in different cell types. It's a nice looking figure, and reasonably clear.

But then you go to print the articles (some of us do that) on your black and white printer and the figures become incomprehensible.

Of course, the obvious question: so what? Why not use a color printer? Or simply view things on the computer or a tablet? Content is delivered overwhelmingly by the web now; isn't it natural that figures reflect the most common viewing medium?

Well, yes. But it's still a problem for a sizeable minority (not many women, but as many as 10% of men) of the population who experience colorblindness. "Colorblindness" is a blanket term to refer to any disorder resulting in loss of color perception. Completely grayscale colorblindness is very rare, but difficulty telling red and green apart is relatively common. Variability is seen in the degree of impairment; many people are simply "red-green weak", whereas others cannot tell the two apart.  Blue and yellow are also indistinguishable to some people, though this is less common.

The previously mentioned figure would look like this to someone with protanopia, a form of red-green colorblindness (note that colorblind images were simulated using Photoshop and the Vischeck plugin).

An important thing to note is that what appears illegible in grayscale is not necessarily illegible for colorblindness; a comparative example is shown below  Thus, it's possible to use colors effectively and still accommodate the colorblind population. Take this example from a Merck drug discovery paper (DOI: 10.1021/cb2003225). The quality of the original image (left) is not significantly damaged for a person with red-green colorblindness (center), even though the figure is indiscernable when rendered grayscale (right).

Web developers take colorblindness into account. It's an important topic in website design; professional web designers must ensure their content renders to readers who can't see, can't hear, can't see well, use Apple products, or other disabilities. As such, guidelines have been set up to ensure accessibility, including recommendations for color and contrast. The W3C standards, for example, "help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities including auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech, and visual disabilities" (read more here if you're interested). Validation tools are commonly employed to ensure websites meet these standards.

So why haven't some journals gotten the message?

Consider the following examples, shown in the original form on the top/left with simulated protanopia beneath/right. Both of the example figures are from a 2008 JACS article (DOI: 10.1021/ja807872s). In this first example,  the graph is illustrating the fluorescence response of a bisboronic acid rhodamine derivative to various peptide substrates in order to demonstrate its selectivity. First off, this figure is difficult to read in the first place. But in the original full color image, peptides 1 and 10 are clearly the top symbols. In the colorblind-simulation image, it's tougher to tell. Is it 10 or 6 or 4? Is it 1 or 7? 9 kind of looks close, too. There's the little lines behind the markers, but those are confusing themselves. While the text clarifies this figure further, the figure label does not.

The next example is even worse. The results of labeling studies are shown. In their original color (left) they're quite striking. But the labels are red and green. Hence, under red-green colorblindness, the pictures are meaningless.

This should be unacceptable; all modern fluorescence imaging programs have the option of changing the display color of a particular fluorescent channel; hence, it is trivial to simply recolor the red or green channel to another color (i.e. blue). Take the following figure from a Nature Methods article (DOI: 10.1038/nmeth735) by Alice Ting. Here, the authors have false-colored the fluorescent dyes (Alexa-568 is in reality red and has been colored orange; CFP is cyan-fluorescent protein and is usually cyan anyway but has been adjusted). As shown from comparing the original figure (left) and the colorblind-simulated image (right), very little detail is lost and the figure is clear.

What do the publishers say about color accessibility? Not much. Consider ACS's policy from its Author Guidelines for JACS:

Color. The use of color to enhance the clarity of complex structures, figures, spectra, schemes, etc. is encouraged. Color reproduction of graphics will be provided at no cost to the author. Color graphics should be submitted in CYMK, not RGB, color mode. Graphics intended to appear in black and white or grayscale should not be submitted in color.

Okay. No mention of accessibility. And JACS is fairly broad, and most of its TOC images even contain color. Let's also briefly consider the color policies of a few other journals: ACS Chemical Biology, Cell, Nature Chemistry, Science, PNAS, and PLoS One. There's not much point in reproducing the individual journal guidelines here, but ACS Chem. Bio., Cell, Nature Chemistry, PNAS, and PLos One all say essentially the same thing as JACS, with no mention of handicap accessibility.

The figure preparation guidelines for Science condense colorblindness to one concise sentence:

Avoid using combinations of red and green together.

Some journals are aware; the author guidelines for Nature Chemical Biology, for instance, make some recommendations (interestingly, Nature's formatting guide doesn't mention them, nor does Nature Chemistry):

Authors are encouraged to consider the needs of colorblind readers (a substantial minority of the male population) when choosing colors for figures. Many colorblind readers cannot interpret visuals that rely on discrimination of green and red, for example. Thus, we ask authors to recolor green-and-red heatmaps, graphs and schematics for which colors are chosen arbitrarily. Recoloring primary data, such as fluorescence or rainbow pseudo-colored images, to color-safe combinations such as green and magenta, turquoise and red, yellow and blue or other accessible color palettes is strongly encouraged.

Granted, for some applications, color is unavoidable; take fluorescent microscopy for example. But the ease of making color figures/graphs/charts/schemes has outpaced some journals' awareness of accessibility standards.

In practice, I think the Nature publishing group does a pretty good job with this. And it's possible these things are perhaps checked in the review process even if not mentioned in the author submission guidelines. But I don't think it would hurt to provide this information upfront.