Help Wanted: C&EN Audience Engagement Editor

Hello, intrepid readers. Hope those of you living above the Tropic of Cancer are enjoying the start of Summer.

Though this usually falls into the Chemjobber camp, an inside source asks whether I can recommend an engaged, excited, passionate web-denizen for a newly-created role at the newsmagazine. From the horse's mouth (emphasis mine):

"We're hiring for someone to act as the 'voice of the magazine' on our social accounts, writing our newsletters, and helping us shape overall social and engagement strategies. Important would be to have someone who is comfortable with social and loves chemistry."

Wow, that sounds like the exact job I would have wanted coming out of grad school! However, I can't keep pace with the ever-changing landscape of social media* and iPhone apps. It's best left to someone, methinks, with an "always-on" mentality and a quicker set of thumbs than yours truly.

If you or someone you know are interested, please apply here.
Look forward to crossing paths with you in the Great Social Experiment.

--
*Get off my lawn, you kids with yer Tencent and Snapchat and Baidu and Twitterz and Hipstergram and Skype and Facebook and Yelp and hi5 and Qzone and Friendster!

Postdoc Required? Check the Job Ads!

Both the New York Times and C&EN have written pithy pieces today referencing the recent Science survey about factors influencing postdoctoral study. 

The tone of all three comes across as confused, painting Ph.D. students as ill-informed, directionless lambs who take on postdoctoral appointments as, in the words of the Science authors, "default...holding patterns" because they "...don't know what they want to do with their lives." (NYT).

Well, for those of us, like me, who postdoc'd with the intention of going into industry, why did I "waste my time in a post-doc" (Science) for seemingly no reason? Here's some telling quotes, highlighting from me:

From Science: "...career goals are quite diverse even among these postdoc-planning students...[t]his may be surprising, given that the postdoc is not typically considered a stepping-stone toward nonacademic careers"

From C&EN: "Many students don’t have a sense of how many jobs are available or what background they require, Doyle says. Chemistry students think they need a postdoc for some high-level industry jobs in the pharmaceutical industry, for example."

From NYT: "[in 2013]...the most common reason students gave for doing a postdoc was that they thought it would increase the chances of getting the job they wanted."

These sound bites sound aloof at best, slightly pandering at worst. Here's my question: Did anyone quoted for this story, or the authors of the Science study themselves, actually read the job ads for the industrial positions in question? Maybe students' fears are well-justified, because the ads I'm seeing from multiple companies read like this:

GSK, API Chemistry Automation Team Member

Pfizer, Sr. Scientist - Obesity + Eating Disorders

Amgen, Scientist, Immuno-Oncology

Genentech, Sr Scientific Researcher, Discovery Ophthamology

In case you missed it, all recommend postdoctoral research. I didn't have to go digging for these, either - simply typing "chemistry" along with "postdoctoral" or "post-doc" into the Career search engine on any corporate site will reveal roles like these. I find it rather ironic that the last quote from the Science lead author reads: "We don’t know enough about the industry labor market” (C&EN write-up). That seems to be the only part of this whole situation I completely agree with. 

OK, grumpiness aside, how can this situation be fixed? I actually appreciate the incentive strategy advanced in the paper, which neither news outlet captured well. Here's most of the penultimate paragraph from Science, highlighting again mine:

"Whereas the recent National Academies report recommends that students make career plans early in the Ph.D. program, we argue that they should consider labor market conditions and career options before starting a Ph.D. program. Doing so may avoid escalating commitment to a research career and may prevent individuals from entering a postdoc holding pattern. Graduate schools could encourage career planning by requiring that applicants analyze different career options and justify why a Ph.D. is the most promising path forward. Funding agencies could implement similar requirements, especially in conjunction with moving a larger share of funding from research grants to training grants and individual fellowships."

Amen. One thing I believe saved me from five years of postdoc purgatory was walking in "eyes open," understanding exactly what jobs I'd qualify for and where I needed to end up to pay back all my student loans. I also realized it would be no cakewalk: I began applying for jobs in my second year of study, and never looked back. 

Grad students: If you're confused about your options, feel free to drop me an email at seearroh_AT_gmail. Confidentiality guaranteed.

Doubt

(Reference: JLC1, JLC2, Derek1, Derek2)

Since February 2014, Prof. Tohru Fukuyama's group has issued corrections to 11 published papers in three journals: Angewandte Chemie, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Organic Letters. Fukuyama's former colleague, Dr. Satoshi Yokoshima (now at Nagoya U), appears as a co-author on 10 of the 11 papers.

Chemical and Engineering News intrepid reporter Beth Halford recently interviewed the two men regarding their ongoing "Correction Crisis." Readers reacted skeptically:

.@cenmag 's Bethany Halford interviews Prof. Fukuyama about NMR spectra issues. Do you buy it? http://t.co/NMvzkofYmW
— Unstable Isotope (@UnstableIsotope) April 12, 2014

[Sigh]...No, I don't.

Let's look at a few more recent correction scandals. After the Cossy group published some strange spectra, Prof. Cossy wrote a letter to the entire Organic Letters community, saying:

"I reach out here with the hope that all readers might learn from this experience as I certainly have. From now on, I will never let a student or postdoc from my group upload a manuscript and/or Supporting Information file to a journal submission site by themselves"

Succinct, supportive, reflective. Prof. Cossy even allowed the responsible lab member to speak through her, saying "I know my behavior is highly unethical. I am deeply sorry for what I have done."

When the Dorta group published a strange statement in the body of their Supporting Information, Dorta spoke to Organometallics Editor John Gladysz, claiming "...the statement [in the SI] was inappropriate." To my knowledge, Prof. Dorta has never blamed his student coauthor, Emma.

Now, let's take a look at the C&EN article. How do Fukuyama and Yokoshima address their spate of corrections?

“Almost all of our recent research accomplishments are the results of close collaboration between myself, Professor Yokoshima, and our students,” Fukuyama explains.

Team spirit! OK, I'm fine with that. Next? (emphasis mine):

“My impression is that some of my students who deleted minor peaks did not take seriously the idea that the spectroscopic data are important proof of the compounds’ purity,” Fukuyama says. “I myself have never manipulated the spectroscopic data or even dreamed that my students would do such a stupid thing.”

Wow. Did they just throw every one of their 19 coauthors (I counted!) under the bus?
Another (emphasis mine):

“It was our fault not to scrutinize every spectrum in the supporting information before sending them out for publication,” Fukuyama adds, “but my staff members and I simply believed that all of my students are honest.” As soon as they learned of the manipulations, he says, “we told our students never to do such a stupid thing. I can assure you that we will never send out manuscripts containing manipulated spectra again.”

To paraphrase the Bard - the Professor doth protest too much, methinks.

Note the "Yes, but..." structure of his argument. See how it lobs the blame squarely back on the coauthors? And the choice of language, calling one's apprentices "stupid" and essentially dishonest? Not cool.

In most scientific organizations, culture comes from the top. Even coauthor Yokoshima admits that...

“We have told our students that the NMR spectra should not contain peaks of residual solvents or impurities for publication...our comments and the limited machine time seemed to have forced them to use the ‘Delete Peak’ function.”

If your group focuses on "clean up your spectra" more than "purify your compounds better," that's a communications issue. If a professor with a large group sees nothing but perfect spectra all day, two thoughts should crop up:

1. "I must have the smartest, most efficient students in the world," or...
2. "Something's fishy here."

Even the busiest profs in the biz - traveling for international conferences, serving on NIH panels, consulting - must still see their students' work at least three times prior to publication. Group meetings, one-on-one office meetings, project round-tables, manuscript submission, reviews, galley proofs? All perfect opportunities to catch ethical errors privately before revealing them to the wider world.

Sadly, the professors don't seem to answer the real question: What went wrong here? Public shaming won't fix your lab's culture. By closing ranks and shutting out 19 potential collaborators, Fukuyama and Yokoshima invite even more scrutiny into their lab's motivations.

Update (4/12/14) - Changed the last paragraph to avoid any judgment on the interview style. I believe Ms. Halford conducted it just fine.

Huh?

While catching up on my old issues of C&EN, I happened across this ad on p. 24 of the March 10 issue:

At the risk of sounding insensitive, can someone please tell me what "the Elements Science" means?!? 

Perhaps some editorial help next time? Tamao's world-famous named reaction and many contributions to synthetic chemistry deserve better. I especially love his anti-chemophobia stance on this profile page at Kyoto U:

"It saddens Prof. Tamao that in recent years people have begun to associate negative images such as environmental pollution with the word ..."chemicals" ...He wishes the benefits of chemistry were more widely known. He points out that organic silicon compounds, his field of specialization, are chemicals that play a very familiar role in our lives. We are in contact with them every day without realizing it, in forms ranging from cosmetics to electronics. "When a new organic compound is created the most amazing things become possible, one after another," says Prof. Tamao. As he laughs impishly, it seems as if a flame of creative energy more powerful than the magic spell of the most brilliant wizard is quietly burning behind his eyeglasses."

Enamine Double-Take

When I have a few minutes of down time at work, I like to flip through the most recent issue of C&EN.  Granted, it's been a busy summer, so I'm a few issues behind; I just cracked the cover of the July 29, 2013 issue today!

As I flipped through, an interesting-looking story covering fluorinated pyrrolidines caught my eye.
But wait, something's wrong here. Did you catch it?

Source: Enamine / C&EN July 29, 2013, p. 12

It just looks like a story! Someone clever over at the company matched the C&EN font, style, and text layout to camouflage their ad as a real story!

Well played, Enamine.

Who Gets Hired Where?

Not to steal Chemjobber's thunder, but I can't resist the question: Does anyone know a reliable data set for industrial chemistry hiring?

Taking my cue from Paul's incredibly exhaustive list of 2013 moves and hires in the academic world, I baited Twitter with the question. CJ opined immediately, with an apt football analogy:

Snerk. 

Dan weighed in with a tantalizing bon mot:

Is there a massive, unseen data set out there somewhere? [scratches chin, head...]

Straightaway, I can only think of LinkedIn, which suffers from being 1) voluntary, and 2) noisy data. Other sources might include faculty web pages (infrequently updated) or the C&EN Careers page (accurate, but limited). The ACS Employment and Salary Survey could track this, but I don't think it's granular down to the specific position and company. 

Readers: Does anyone know of a better way to collect this data? 

Update: CJ (correctly) points out that 'ACS Career Survey' isn't a real thing. Fixed, thanks!

Blast from the Past: 1998 C&EN "Golden Age" Roundtable

Sadly, these "scientists" were not
included in the '98 roundtable
Credit: Universal Pictures

It's always risky business, peering into the future. But that doesn't stop anyone, even chemists, from trying!

Regular readers recall that Chemjobber and I recently teamed up to bring you two perspectives on the inaugural Organometallics roundtable (2012). Of course, this wasn't the first time wily ACS Editors tried this tactic: check out Chemistry's Golden Age, a panel organized to commemorate the 75th anniversary of C&EN by (not-quite-yet-Editor-in-Chief) Rudy Baum in 1998.

Moderated by blog mainstay Ron Breslow, the distinguished group included heavy hitters from a wide sweep of the field: Allen Bard, Richard Zare, Stephen Lippard, Koji Nakanishi, Robert Langer, and Nobelist Richard Smalley (RIP). (I especially enjoyed seeing the "young whipper-snappers" on the panel: Dan Nocera, Barbera Imperiali, and Jacqueline Barton.)


Since we're only about a decade away from affirming their predictions, I figured we'd peek back to see what yesteryear's chem blogs - no doubt on AOL, Prodigy, or GeoCities - might have covered.

#Chemjobs - Optimism reigned, as you might expect from the biotech boom of the late '90s.
Bard: "I think as long as chemists keep getting jobs, there will be chemistry departments...as long as we can turn out students who can find employment, we'll be okay." Yikes. Anyone else?
Barton: "I predict there will be fewer chemistry departments, but not fewer chemists." Well, don't mention that to CJ or Derek. 
Langer: "Some universities have gotten rid of departments, sure. But chemistry? If they're going to get to the point where they're going to get rid of chemistry, that just seems to me like a very long way to go." Reminds me of a funeral procession I saw recently, for a country closing many of its departments...


Energy - Smalley: "Twenty-five years from now the internal combustion engine will be found in museums, battery technology will finally have solved the problem of how we transport electrical power, and fuel cells will be practical devices...We may have solved the problem of cheap solar energy" 
I'll agree with the fuel cell argument, but I don't think we've advanced batteries or solar far enough (yet) to mothball our gas-guzzling autos...though Lippard correctly presages the rise of electric cars. Fossil fuels were "hot" topics: Stuart Rice and Bard both favored (pre-Incovenient Truth) investigation of alternate energy sources to combat global warming.

Young Danial [sic]
Nocera waxes
...artificial life.?
Source: C&EN

Origin of Life - Dan Nocera, he of water-splitting 'pacman' and 'hangman' catalysts, didn't mention anything about them, but instead placed his chips behind artificial membranes and building functional cells; Zare and Breslow both jumped right on board! Maybe they all hung out with Venter back in the day?


Times-are-a-changin' - The terms "bionic man," "Pentium chip," and "electronic publication" all sneak into the discussion.


Computers - "Unfettered optimism." This panel had grown, published, and worked with computers. They envisioned stunning things ahead.

"We can rebuild him,
using a 56K modem and
an Apple IIe!"
Credit: jackm's blog

Breslow: "Within 25 years, most reaction mechanism studies of the kind that we do now on simple reactions will be replaced by computational studies..." Yup.
Theodore Brown: "The combination of combinatorial chemistry and computational methods may lead us to the point where we actually have a library of catalysts designed to do specific things." Uh-huh. 
Smalley: "One of my favorite dreams is developing true spectroscopies for individual molecules..." Check.

Publishing - Funny, for computer-literate panelists sponsored by a magazine, group members remained stodgily entrenched in printed paper.
Bard (then Editor of JACS), referred to online papers: "I don't think it is going to be popular among chemists." Imperiali, who must have been plagued by pop-up ads: "The volume of material on the Internet is getting out of control. And the quality control has to go down because of the volume." 


Smalley, ever the visionary, really sees what's coming: "In 25 years, we will be getting our journals transmitted directly to a little thing that will feel like a book...I can't imagine waiting for a piece of paper to arrive in Texas before I read it." He would have loved Nooks, Kindles, and iPads.


Bold Move - From Allen Bard, wise words:

"If I have to make a prediction about the future, I would predict that five of the most important things that will be developed in the next 25 years have not been discussed at this table."

Truly a statement for all seasons. I've searched the text, and I find no mention of quantum dots, organocatalysis, MOFs, C-H activation, or even the reactions knocking on the Nobel Committee's door: palladium cross-coupling and olefin metathesis. I'll certainly keep this bon mot in mind, so I can conclude future roundtables this way...


Final Thought - You could easily criticize this roundtable for being strongly academia-leaning. The OM collection, though more well-rounded with Dow and DuPont reps, still lacks enough industry involvement. What do the folks in startups, "new energy," or science writers think about the future of our field?

*Readers, do you have recommendations for a different kind of panel?