xkcd Quiz in the New Yorker

Source: Randall Munroe, for the New Yorker

If you haven't taken Randall Munroe's Thing Explainer quiz in the New Yorker, click on over for 5 minutes of fun.

I'm sure anyone reading this blog'll get a perfect score, but it's an interesting approach to scientific outreach all the same.

Click here to try your luck!

Takei's Target Audience

George Takei, an American actor / activist perhaps most famous as "Sulu" from Star Trek, inadvertently let slip a fantastic bit of advice to Terry Gross on Fresh Air (emphasis mine):

Takei: outreach specialist, helmsman

"I've been on speaking tours advocating for equality for the LGBT community. But what we noticed was I was already talking to the converted — either LGBT people or allies — and what we needed to do was reach what I maintain is the decent, fair-minded, vast middle — people who are busy pursuing their lives and don't stop to think about other issues."

Just replace "equality for the LGBT community" with "chemistry for the general public," and you stumble on a very familiar problem in the blogosphere; communication to that "vast middle" is something we ponder every day.

Stock Photo Science - Colchicine

Our tiny company doesn't have a true marketing or business development staff, so publicity often falls to the scientists - y'know, during our "down time." : )

For the past month, I've been trawling stock photo sites and "how-to" guides to assemble some company brochures for an upcoming event. Yesterday, I dug up this stock photo gem:

Source: iStockphoto

Now, Just Like Cooking 1.0 might have beleaguered the graphic artist, decrying his lack of experience and shouting about why we need more chemists in design departments. 

But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd. Let's go piece by piece and try to figure out why we can't print this on our marketing materials.

For starters: the molecule I think they're looking for, colchicine, isn't exactly unknown. Doctors and healers have prescribed this plant extract for centuries to treat gout and local inflammation, despite concerns over its toxicity. Chemists have known how to make colchicine since at least the mid-1950s. 

So, here's how the molecule should look. There's some important differences here, perhaps most importantly that the acetamide (the "top" functional group, CH3-C=O-NH) should actually have a bond to the central ring. 

Next, let's move to the bottom right ring, which I'd call a cycloheptatrienone ("hepta" = 7, "trien" = 3 double bonds, "one" = ketone functional group). See how the double bonds are shuffled around in the stock photo? That would be OK, since the system does have other resonance structures, forms where just the electrons move around without breaking the carbon framework. But this structure, where the C=O and C=C bonds overlap, makes 5 bonds at that carbon. That only happens under very specific conditions, but certainly not in this drug.

Finally, check out those bonds on the left. We organic chemists use bond notation to infer a lot of crucial details, not least which atoms connect to which other atoms! Note the line drawn from the 6-membered ring to the "C" of the bottom methoxy (H3CO-) group. Perhaps an artistic choice, centering the group over the bond, but the real molecule shows a C-O bond. 

I know photographers don't often consult chemists before they take these shots, but I'd invite their input here. Wouldn't their business do better if their photos were accurate? 

Speaking as a scientist-cum-designer, it would make my job easier.

Happy Friday, everyone.

-SAO

On Jargon

While reading Gary Stix's interview with Breaking Bad scientific advisor Prof. Donna Nelson, I stumbled upon a very telling chunk of text (emphasis mine):

"...the reduction step [for methamphetamine production] can vary from one synthesis to another, and there's a lot of differences in the reducing agents. And so I said, I don't know what reagent you want. They said to send them a list, and they liked the one that was aluminum-mercury because it would be easier for the actors to say those words.

That's another example of where I let [the producers] be boss. I wouldn't go back to them and suggest another reagent because it might be safer, cheaper, or have a higher yield. I just said, 'yes, sir.'"

"Sodium cyanoborohydride? No way am I saying that!"
Credit: AMC

Food for thought, especially for those of us trying to package chemistry in a more palatable format for folks outside the lab. But, the more I scratched my head over this situation, the more I wondered...are reducing agents that tough to pronounce?

Over at xkcd, Randall Munroe cheekily trounced our current cultural fixation on trochees, spoken words with a two-syllable stressed / unstressed pattern (ninja, pizza, Wal-Mart, Ke$ha, Xbox, etc.). "Aluminum-mercury," though taken right from the periodic table, hardly rolls off the tongue: seven* syllables!

"Classic" reagents for the reaction in question, like sodium cyanoborohydride (10 syllables) or sodium tris-acetoxyborohydride (12) certainly won't get by the writers without a grumble. But what about formic acid (4, with two trochees)? Raney nickel (4, two trochees) should also pass muster. Even better, maybe you could just fold the first two reductants into the generic "borane" (2, trochee) category?

Hey, AMC: Let's do lunch.

*And, of course, 8 if you live in the UK, and add that extra "i" to aluminium!

Link Farm: Chemistry Communication

Blogs, like any medium, shift, change, and grow over time. At first, I devoted my humble corner of the internet to food chemistry. After a while, it became a tool to root out misconceptions about chemistry in popular culture.

Well, to borrow a phrase from Click and Clack, I've come around for the "third half of the show" - figuring out how to bridge the gap between the growing public desire for accessible, informative, entertaining science content and chemistry's approach to that communication. A lot of terms have swirled around this issue: "punching down," #BogusChem, "Inside Baseball," 'in-reach' not outreach, #chemophobia, and "dumbing down," to name just a few.

Thanks for the tip about the magnets, Andre!
(P.S. Yes, I know "D" isn't an element)

This post will serve as a (growing) collection of pieces dedicated to thoughtful chemistry outreach.
Readers: Have a favorite post I haven't included? Send it along in the comments.

Janet Stemwedel, Doing Good Science: "When we target chemophobia, are we punching down?"

Chad Jones, The Collapsed Wavefunction: "Punching down? I don't remember swinging at all."

Ash Jogalekar, The Curious Wavefunction: "Where's the chemistry lobby? On why we need a National Center for Chemical Education."

See Arr Oh, Just Like Cooking: "The Chemistry Popularity Conundrum"

Michelle Francl, Slate: "Don't Take Medical Advice from the NY Times Magazine"; Nature Chemistry: "How to counteract chemophobia";

Paul Bracher, ChemBark: "Combatting Chemophobia"

Rebecca Guenard, Atomic-O-Licious: "Chemistry Isn't Just About Chemicals"

Science 2.0: "Chemophobia - The Unnatural Fixation of Activists"

Chemjobber, Dr. Rubidium, See Arr Oh, Chemjobber: "Chemistry Avengers" (podcast)

Marc Leger, Atoms and Numbers: "Consider the audience when addressing chemophobia"

Chris Clarke, Pharyngula: "Did you know douchebags are full of dihydrogen monoxide?"

Andrew Bissette, Behind NMR Lines: "In defense of #chemophobia"

More to come...

Podcast: Calcium Redux

My post on calcium catalysis didn't really engage a wide audience of readers the way I had wanted it to. A few kind souls helped me refine my approach, which I thought might work better as a radio blurb.

Dear Jake: Thanks, I took on your challenge. Here's my new entry:

Music: Hall & Oates, Bird and the Bee

Readers, whaddaya think? More accessible, less? Please let me know in the comments!

Hey WIRED, Why No Chemistry Love?

101 Signals, WIRED Magazine's latest compilation of "...best reporters, writers, and thinkers on the Internet" just went live. They've broken down the list, which includes blogs, Twitter, and Tumblr feeds, into chunks: Business, Design, Consumer Tech, Gov't & Security, Culture, and Science.

Here's the Science group. A distinguished bunch, but guess what?
Not a chemist among them!!!

Sure, we've got great, well-known personalities like Ed Yong (Not Exactly Rocket Science) and Randall Munroe (xkcd), Phil Plait and Robert Krulwich. I see plenty of physicists, biologists, astronomers, geneticists, and science writers, but no chemists.
And yet, two Tumblr accounts with the word "f*ck" sprinkled in (Classy, WIRED, classy).

I suppose Maggie Koerth-Baker, who has written about chemistry several times, is the closest we get to full representation. But she's plugged as the BoingBoing science editor / NYT columnist, with nary a mention of chemistry to be found.

So, what gives? Folks on Twitter have suggested a few issues with the chemblogosphere, from "in-reach" in place of outreach, to a tendency to "punch-down," or even (gasp!) that our stuff just doesn't appeal to a mainstream audience.

All valid points. Well, allow me to retort: An aspect of chicken-and-the-egg surely works behind these listicles. Although we haven't fully ironed out all of chemistry bloggers' quirks yet, not featuring our blogs in mainstream offerings just exacerbates the problem!

How can we be part of the solution,* if we can't even get in the door?

In case a WIRED staffer happens upon this post, please consider the following widely-followed, high-quality chemistry blogs to include in your next collection:

In the Pipeline
ChemBark
Elemental
The Curious Wavefunction

*Please don't say, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate." We've all heard that one.

The Secret Life of...Chemists?

A friendly link on Twitter led me to Neil deGrasse Tyson's profile page at NOVA's "The Secret Life of Scientists & Engineers" (Tagline: Where the lab coats come off). I'll admit I haven't visited much before, but I believe it's a PBS web series devoted to public outreach through personal conversations with scientists.

Source: pbs.org

Noticing the ~40 or so other smart folks in the left-hand margin, I wondered whether NOVA had yet profiled any personable chemists. Alas, far as I can tell, not a single chemist* appears on their site; there's a "nanoscientist," a "DNA Scientist," and a "biochemist," but no synthesis, polymers, or catalysts in sight!

Luckily, commenters to the rescue: A request for nominations on the site has drawn >100 comments, and I see at least 25 people clamoring for chemists.

If you know a chemist with a hidden talent, please consider sending in their name.

*Never fear, they've already profiled plenty of physicists, neuroscientists, climate scientists, astronomers, and psychologists. Some disciplines just promote themselves better.

What's that Molecule? U.S. NAEP Edition

I can be a bit rough on a few topics 'round these parts. Chemophobia. Unscientific rumors. Coloring-book abstracts. And, of course, the interesting Internet images of chemists - always white lab coats, intense gazes...and nonsensical atomic scrawls in the background. Up to now, however, I've tried to joke about it, and then offer small suggestions to improve them.

Her smile means she knows the structural joke...
Source: 2009 NAEP | U.S. Dept. of Education

Here's one that actually threw me: the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has just released their 2011 National "Scientific Report Card" for U.S. middle schoolers (I'll comment more on what it says in a future post). Linking out from NAEP's site, I found this document, clocking in at 155 pages, which explains the scientific framework for this testing, and the methods used to assay student knowledge. Look at the cover image, of a young girl smiling as she discovers the joy of chemical modeling kits...

...What is that molecule, anyway? Anyone recognize it? It has a terminal "-CO3" group, and some sort of terminal methylene on the other end. I couldn't think of a reasonable answer, except the dreaded posed picture possibility.

High irony, that this picture appears on the front of a document about, well...science education!

The Chemistry Popularity Conundrum

Last week (October 16-22) was National Chemistry Week in the US. Did you celebrate? By all rights, it could have been the biggest one yet, since we’re deep into the tenth month of the International Year of Chemistry (#IYC2011). Did you see any news specials? Did Time or Newsweek run an exposé?

Credit: time.com

Probably not, but why not? When scientists cracked the human genetic code, front pages everywhere relayed the tense horse-race between Venter’s TIGR and Collins’s Human Genome Project. Whenever physicists flip the switch at the Large Hadron Collider, the public dreams of mini-black holes and cheating Einstein’s relativity. Chemistry, however, always seems to be the black sheep of the gang; DuPont’s slogan for nearly 50 years was “Better Things for Better Living . . .Through Chemistry,” until the final portion of the tagline was dropped in the mid-‘80s.

What creates the chemistry image problem? It’s true that many of the “pure chemistry” accomplishments of the last 30 years have gone largely unnoticed: ask someone at a local restaurant about triblock copolymers, organocatalysis, brevetoxin, or dye-sensitized solar cells. Applied chemistry fares a bit better, from polymers to paints, lasers to ligands, but the public still attributes many interface discoveries to other fields – drug chemistry gets lumped into “Health and Medicine,” or water-splitting tossed in with “New Energy.”

Don't let the test-tube on the front fool you.
Credit: amazon.com

The phenomenon even reaches general science books. On a whim, I opened up National Geographic’s The Science Book (bonus tagline – Everything You Need to Know about the World and How it Works) at a book store last week. A hefty volume, coming in at 432 pp., thus you might expect the “central science” to occupy at least 30% . . . right?

Wrong. Page count: biology, ecology, and sociology – 142 pages.  Physics, math, and ‘technology’ – 111 pages. Chemistry? 26 pages.

Total.

Does this all come down to poor public relations? Biology sells itself on some big questions: origin of life, evolution, ending disease, and genetic engineering. Physics moves out onto an even wider plane: does God exist?, fundamental particles, dark energy, string theory, and black holes. Ask most people about the word chemical, however, and their connotation is tangibly negative, associating the word with poisonous, pollution, ersatz stand-ins for “genuine” flavors or fragrances, artificial, corrosive, or toxic.

Prof. David MacMillan, Princeton

Not that none have addressed the issue – just recently, David MacMillan, editor of Chemical Science and accomplished organic chemist, called for increased outreach:    

‘One major thing chemists need to work on is their ability to promote their work to other scientists and the public. This is something we are really not good at in general and if we improved, it would really open doors for us and improve society’s perception of chemistry and its impact.'

ACS attempts much the same with their Chemistry Ambassadors program, and the Interactive Periodic Table of Videos surely adds some demonstration “Wow!” factor. But the days of science-themed programs (Mr. Wizard, NOVA, How it’s Made, even the tongue-in-cheek Look Around You) seem to have waned, and Mythbusters can’t save the whole genre single-handedly. Linus Pauling, Noam Chomsky, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, E.O. Wilson, and Oliver Sacks have held down much of the science PR fort, but we still haven’t found the next great chemistry “populizer.” So, what are we to do?

Can these guys hold down the science program genre forever?
Credit: dsc.discovery.com

Well, I’m not the first to tackle this question. Luckily, many have gone before me: see Dr. Free Ride’s post on Scientopia (“navel-gazing” sounds so apropos) or the CHEMisperceptions Blog Roundtable from early 2011 hosted at ScienceGeist. Start there, and glance through the situations and stories these authors present. See where you stand.

And think. Just think.

Think about how you’ll answer the dreaded “So, what do you do?” question at the next holiday party. Think about a show you wish were on TV, DVD, or radio that covered breaking-edge reactions or materials, but isn’t. Think about how you might tell such a story. Think about what types of jobs you, as a chemist, might envision working in 10, 20 years . . . if they even exist right now! Think of the reactions, equations, elements, polymers, or drugs (heh) that really ‘get you up’ in the morning.

When you’ve thought awhile, narrow down your list to one or two things you truly enjoy. Write a short blog post or a newspaper article. Send an email. Take some pictures. Tell your kids. Teach a short course. Write a book. Produce a show. Anything you can do that creates new, high-quality content to help improve the stead of science in the world will do.

Idealistic?  Sure.   

Dreamy?  You got me.

Possible?

. . . I’d like to think so.

(Note: You don’t have to start from nothing - there’s quite a few folks already working on the problem. For general chemistry blogs, start at CENtral Science. Work your way around to Chemistry Blog, Discover Magazine, SciAm Blogs, and Popular Science. Chemjobber, The Curious Wavefunction, and ChemBark help capture some of the current chemical zeitgeist, while Totally Synthetic and BRSM cover my favorite topic, chemical synthesis. For health and medicine, try In The Pipeline or The Medicine Show. Want books? Napoleon’s Buttons, The Poisoner’s Handbook, Mauve, and Uncle Tungsten are a few favorites. On a personal note, although he’s not formally a chemist, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? helped me appreciate how one can use scientific curiosity to change the world.)