Archive for the 'Current Events' Category

It’s time for a little experiment. Allow me to apologize in advance for being so cryptic in this post, but I want to observe how the discussion here proceeds without any interference from me.

In the last several weeks, a number of people have brought to my attention a fascinating story relating to careers in academia. Not since the SSS have I heard people voice such strong opinions on a subject that falls squarely in the arena of scientific culture and politics. I believe the story merits discussion and analysis, just because it is so atypical of “standard operating procedure.” Who knows? Maybe the SOP is changing?

Anyway, since this story seems to be well known to the community already, I thought that you all could have first crack at it without hearing my opinion first. I’m sitting this thread out…at least, to begin with. To start the discussion, I’ll throw out a single word and the guidance that it is a story that has not even been tangentially discussed on this blog before today. Keep the discussion civil, but feel free to voice your opinion. Be sure to use proper grammar, especially if you have no idea what’s going on and are just leaving some random insult directed at me.

Now, the word: Princeton.

Princeton University took home the Chemmy for Outstanding Department of 2006, and it looks like they’re going to make a run at defending the title in 2007. Valued sources recently told the ChemBark News Network that the Ivy League school has made generous offers to a number of outstanding young organic chemists who are already tenured in top-five departments. Fresh on the heels of adding Sorensen and MacMillan, Princeton is looking to firmly establish itself as a hotbed of organic chemistry for years to come.

Raiding other schools’ faculties has long been a strategy for building departmental strength. Where the Yankees and Red Sox are the baseball teams most willing to reach deep into their pockets for big-name talent, Harvard is the school most famous for doing so in chemistry. Most of the department’s big guns were hired as tenured professors from other schools: Corey and Jacobsen from Illinois, Whitesides from MIT, Evans and Myers from Caltech, Lieber from Columbia, Schreiber from Yale, and Kahne from Princeton. On the flip side, assistant professors have had a miserable record of gaining tenure in the department (until recently).

While pursuing the free agent market at the expense of decimating your farm system is generally a poor idea in baseball, it is a viable strategy in the world of chemistry. Granting someone tenure equates to giving them a contract for life, something unheard of in the sports world. Unfortunately for universities, it often takes more than seven years to get a handle on the quality of an assistant professor. Hiring a proven forty-year-old is a much safer bet. And unlike in sports, there are no salary caps or luxury taxes in academia, so there are no limits to the amount of money you can spend.

Of course, the strategy of buying talent is contingent on being rich—the more money a school has, the better it can play the game. Schools with less funding not only have a harder time reeling in heavy hitters, they have a harder time retaining members of their faculty who’ve attracted the interest of other schools. Money doesn’t just factor into salary, but also into expanding lab space and improving instrumentation. Ambitious professors want to improve the efficiency of their research and have the flexibility to expand their labs and their programs.

There are some factors that money can’t help.  Geographic location is often important, as it influences features such as the local culture and the employment market for professors’ significant others. And as with anything related to academia, politics can play a big role. If the deans at a school get on an interdisciplinary kick, there many be money available for a nanobiophysical chemist but not for a synthetic one. An aspect that is particularly intriguing about the Princeton move is that it is geared towards pure chemistry instead of the interdisciplinary flavor of the month. That’s rare nowadays.

Of course, this story is still developing and nothing has been set in stone, but things are looking mighty exciting if you’re an organic chemist at Princeton.

Back in February, I caught the two-hour NOVA special on the life of Percy Julian.  I’ll give it 3.5 stars out of 5.  Julian’s story is really interesting, and amazingly, the producers did an exceptional job of conveying the excitement of research in organic chemistry.  While it gets a little slow towards the end, the program is well worth watching.

When I first heard about the episode, I was skeptical.  Part of me was upset that of all the excellent chemists in the history of chemistry, Percy Julian was picked to be featured on TV.  When faced with the decision to select one chemist to represent our profession, most of us would pick a legend like Woodward or Pauling.  So, I sat there asking myself, “Why does Julian deserve to hold the torch for chemistry on television?”

Adding more fuel to the fire was that the program was titled “Forgotten Genius”.  Given the circumstances of it being Black History Month, the obvious implication was that society had “forgotten” about Julian because he was black.  Also, “genius” is a word that is probably used more frequently than is warranted.  Both of these editorial statements in the title kind of put me on the attack before the program even aired.  On the plus side, the potential for controversy definitely piqued my interest.

After watching the program, I came out with a much more favorable opinion than I had going in.  The producers did a fantastic job of showing that Julian was an excellent chemist and an amazing man.  Any argument to the contrary is simply untenable.  Here’s a quick rundown of his credentials: He grew up in the Jim Crow South and tenaciously pursued his education into college, where excelled in his courses by finishing first in his class at DePauw. He gained admission to Harvard for graduate study, but had to leave with a master’s degree due to his inability to secure a teaching fellowship because of his race.  After completing a Ph.D. overseas, he set up a lab at DePauw, where he beat Sir Robert Robinson to the total synthesis of physostigmine and embarrassed the synthetic legend in the process. Despite his credentials, Julian was unable to secure a job at Depauw or in industry because he was black.  Eventually, he was offered a position at Glidden.  There, he directed the Soya Products Division, and his discoveries of uses for soy mirrored everything that George Washington Carver is celebrated for with the peanut, and more. Julian made important contributions to total synthesis, steroid chemistry, and materials chemistry.  After Glidden terminated its steroid work, Julian moved on to start his own chemical company, where he challenged the Syntex monopoly in front of Congress and won.  And as if all of these achievements weren’t impressive enough, Julian accomplished them in the face of an appalling amount of racism in both the chemical establishment and the Chicago community.

Simply amazing.  I knew parts of his story, but most of the details were completely new to me.  While I got more than my money’s worth, even at the end, the title “Forgotten Genius” left a sour taste in my mouth.  Personally, I hadn’t “forgotten” about Julian—I never really knew his story.  While society may have forgotten about him, Julian is hardly unique in this regard.  Our society didn’t forget about Percy Julian because we’re racist, but because he worked in chemistry and in industry, where the credit is spread more thinly. How many industrial chemists can the general public name?  I’m a chemist, and while I didn’t know that Percy Julian developed soy into fire suppressants at Glidden, I still don’t know the names of the scientists who invented pressure-sensitive adhesives at 3M, nor the people who developed Viagra at Pfizer.  These are remarkable achievements, but aside from Carothers, Plunkett, and Derek Lowe, I’m at a loss to name more than a handful of industrial chemists whom I don’t know personally.

As for my initial reaction to Julian being chosen over Woodward or Pauling, perhaps my problem was that I watched this program as an insider wanting the fundamental history of chemistry to be told, whereas most viewers probably tuned in to be entertained.  After giving the issue more thought, it occurred to me that Julian is a much better person to present to the general public than someone like Woodward.  While we appreciate RBW’s accomplishments as experts, his creativity would be very hard to convey to a lay audience.  Contrast that with the achievements of Julian, whose crosses to bear are much more obvious and easy for the general public to relate to. 

Indeed, with a few exceptions (like presidential addresses and debates), the main purpose of television programs is to get ratings—even on PBS.  The purpose of television is not to give credit to deserving chemists or to educate the public.  Percy Julian’s story was compelling and perfect for Black History Month. In this regard, it was a win for NOVA, but it was also a win for chemistry.  For one night, the show made our science seem exciting and relevant, though perhaps elitist and inaccessible.  Even with those minor drawbacks, we should take what we can get.  Chemists are simply awful at promoting chemistry to the general public. Contrast this with physics, where Einstein is a God, cosmology has fueled countless sci-fi series like Star Trek, and Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, Neil deGrasse Tyson appear on TV left and right. Who is the face of chemistry? For all the good that chemistry does in the world, all we get is bad press in the form of chemical spills, plant explosions, weapons of mass destruction, hazardous waste, and editorials on how drug companies are evil and oil companies make too much money.  Even the word “chemical” has a negative connotation.  While one TV show on PBS won’t fix our problem, recounting the stories of some “chemical heroes” will go a long way.  NOVA made an excellent choice in Julian.  Now, will other chemists follow or is this party over?

Whether you like it or not, one of the principal reasons the government supports scientific research is to strengthen our ability to wage war. Scientific discoveries often open avenues for new and improved weapons, and making sure that our military technology is the most advanced in the world is vital to our national security. While military power alone is not a sufficient condition for maintaining our superpower status, it is a necessary condition. Part of our job as scientists is to use our knowledge to ensure that the “good guys” have the most advanced technology in the world when it comes to efficiently killing humans. Yes, this thought is a little revolting, but having scientists collaborate with the military is one of the best ways to ensure the protection of our political and social ideals.

The announcement that the US will begin developing a new model of nuclear warhead seemed to completely bypass the major news outlets. At least, no one made a fuss about it. I don’t know how much of an improvement the new design is over the old one, but it seems that the change is oriented more toward safer handling than greater yields.  That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more to the story.  I don’t expect the Army to go around advertising what exactly they’re hoping to accomplish. Congress needs to know, but that can be done behind closed doors. Suffice it to say, if the leap is significant, I think that the money used to fund the project would be money well spent. It will be interesting to see what Congress has to say when hearings open this month.

I’ve always wondered where the US stands in terms of the active development of chemical weapons. I know the Army has publicized the fact that it’s trying to destroy large portions of its stockpile, but it probably doesn’t want anyone to know whether it’s researching ways to create more potent chemical weapons.  Whether for tactical or strategic purposes, I simply presume that in some secret lab, the government continues to sponsor research on lethal chemistry.

And that’s a good thing. Do you think the bad guys wouldn’t use a powerful chemical weapon if they had access to it? No way. In both times of war and of peace, we should constantly challenge ourselves to develop new and improved chemical and biological weapons so that: 1) they are available if we need them and 2) we can develop effective counterweapons in case the enemy makes them first. Saying that the development of weapons of mass destruction is wrong and pursuing a strategy of self-imposed ignorance will solve nothing. We can’t afford to let our enemies seize the initiative on any of these fronts.

If you don’t want to participate, that’s understandable—I personally wouldn’t like testing compounds on mice all day—but be glad (as I am) that there are people who have decided to work in these areas.

The finals of the Intel Science Talent Search ended last night in Washington, DC. Old fogies like me know the contest as the Westinghouse, a competition open to high school seniors who have completed scientific research projects. The girl who won top honors this year built an instrument for collecting Raman spectra, in her home, for $300. Now, if she would just go ahead and make a 400 MHz NMR spectrometer for ChemBark Labs, I’ve got a check for $400 with her name on it.

The Westinghouse/Intel competition has been running since 1942, and you might recognize some of the people who’ve reached the finals:

Andrew Streitwieser (STS ‘45)
Martin Karplus (STS ‘47)
Ronald Breslow (STS ‘48)
Walter Gilbert (STS ‘49)
Roald Hoffmann (STS ‘55)
Eric Lander (STS ‘74)
David Liu (STS ‘90)
Paul Bracher (STS ‘98)

Those are some pretty big names in chemistry. Andy Streitwieser’s story is particularly remarkable. It’s been about six years since I’ve read his autobiography, so I might have a couple of the details wrong, but it goes something like this:

Streitweiser and his friends loved chemistry so much that they built a rudimentary lab in his basement. While thumbing through the literature, he came across a JACS paper that described the reaction of fluorene with sulfuryl chloride but didn’t report the position at which the molecule was chlorinated. Streitweiser repeated the preparation and found that the melting point of his product matched that of 2-chlorofluorene, which had been reported previously. Maybe it doesn’t sound like such a big deal now, but it was 1944, he was in high school, and he was working in a lab that he built himself. You gotta love it.

Streitwieser wrote up his results, and at the tender age of 17, he published a communication/note in JACS. The institutional address printed in the journal was his home address in Queens. The only time I’ve seen something even close to as cool as that is when Gunter Wachtershauser listed his Yahoo! e-mail address on a paper in Science. L0Lzzz!!111!1!

Streitwieser would grow up to become a true hero in the field of physical organic chemistry, spending over 50 years on the faculty at Berkeley. He kept (keeps?) an entire print collection of JACS in his office, and before the advent of pubs.acs.org, it was not uncommon for students to stop by when the library was missing issues they needed. Even when Streitwieser was in his office, his secretary would tell the students to just go in and grab whatever they needed. Streitwieser, renowned for his intense concentration, would sit there like a statue despite being in the presence of someone rummaging through his book shelves. Weird.

Anyway, if you read through that paper from 1944, you will notice a familiar name in the acknowledgments: Ed Kosower. A classmate of Streitwieser’s at Stuyvesant, Kosower also grew up to become a fantastic chemist. They even co-authored a sophomore organic textbook together (with Clayton Heathcock). The book is superb, but it’s unfortunately out-of-print. I heard that the reason the fourth edition is the last is that the authors refused to acquiesce in the publisher’s wish to add color graphics. You’ve got to give those guys credit for not selling out the Old School.

James Sherley, the MIT professor who went on a hunger strike in protest of MIT’s decision not to grant him tenure, finally broke his fast on Friday.  He lasted a whopping 12 days, although it should be noted that he was still ingesting liquid nourishment and probably snuck in a couple of Snickers bars when nobody was looking.

I applaud MIT for not giving in to Sherley’s ridiculous demands and the professor himself for his will to live.  In addition to losing his battle for tenure and his pride, Sherley said he lost 20 pounds.  I suppose that counts for something.

The bubble fusion investigation at Purdue University is now complete, and the school has reached the conclusion that no scientific misconduct occurred.  What is unclear is what exactly was being investigated.  The case centers around an exciting experimental result reported in 2002 that neutron emission and nuclear fusion occurred following the collapse of bubbles in deuterated acetone.  Many researchers have been unable to reproduce the results, and many of them think something fishy might have been done to the data.

The Purdue news release said that the inquiry was raised internally, but Ken Suslick, a chemistry professor at UIUC, admits he contacted the administration at Purdue to suggest that the 2002 report was fraudulent.  The conclusion that most people are drawing is that Suslick’s questions were not among the questions investigated by Purdue.  Instead, it appears that the investigation centered on whether the P.I. should have put his name on more (!) papers.  We’ll never know exactly, because Purdue is claiming that it has already said too much:

Purdue’s policy on integrity in research requires that all allegations of research misconduct be reviewed under procedures that ensure strict confidentiality. The policy states:

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“The mere suspicion or allegation of wrongdoing, even if totally unjustified, is potentially damaging to a person’s career. Consequently, no information about charges of a lack of integrity in research may be disclosed except to the appropriate university and federal authorities.”

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However, in the interest of ending speculation regarding Purdue’s inquiry, Dr. Taleyarkhan has agreed to allow the university to confirm the existence of the internal review and disclose its final result, according to Joseph L. Bennett, vice president for university relations at Purdue. “Professor Taleyarkhan cooperated fully throughout the inquiry,” Bennett said.

Scientists are going to have to get together and decide what information should and should not be released at the conclusion of investigations into alleged scientific misconduct.  Steadfast silence, regardless of the circumstances and outcome of an investigation, seems unacceptable.

Some form of the bubble fusion report should be made public so that the community knows what questions were examined and how thoroughly.  What have they got to lose?  If the evidence led the panel to conclude that no scientific misconduct occurred, then they should be confident that the scientific community will reach the same conclusions with the same information.

Along the same lines, if you are going to fund your research with taxpayer dollars, the taxpayers have a right to know what is going on.  If you want all of this business to be private, raise private funds. I would hate to see the government stymie scientific creativity by imposing burdensome oversight of publicly-funded research, but if scientists can’t decide how these investigations should be handled, Congress will step in sooner or later.

Yesterday, Drew Gilpin Faust was named the first female president of Harvard University in its 371-year history. I’m glad that Harvard finally lost its virginity in this regard. Now, can we please stop dwelling on the issue?

While being a woman probably helped her candidacy, I don’t think that the Corporation was intent on having a female president at any cost. Faust got the job not because she is a girl, but because she was among the most qualified candidates. She appears to have the skills and now the reins are deservedly in her hands. Not that she 1) cares or 2) reads this blog, I wish her luck and success.

Now Harvard can finally move past the ugly way its faculty dealt with Larry Summers. While his brusque management style ruffled the faculty’s feathers, instead of dealing with that issue directly, a large faction of professors opportunistically used his comments on women and science as a springboard for an all-out media campaign for his ouster. He was thrown to the wolves—shameful behavior by an academic body that is supposed to value having a diverse set of hypotheses to fuel healthy academic debate.

I am a little concerned with regard to what the presidency of Drew Gilpin Faust will mean for science at Harvard. While I have no reason to believe she will be an enemy of science, her background is in the history of the Civil War and I wonder if she is in tune with the needs of scientists. The last time I checked, Harvard’s expansion into Allston wasn’t going to include a billion-dollar institute for 19th-century American history. Perhaps that’s why I was hoping that Thomas Cech would be elected, but the Nobel laureate in chemistry pulled his name from consideration. In fact, the most disturbing aspect of this presidential selection process was that so many talented candidates (both male and female) withdrew their names from consideration.

The truth is that there were worse options for scientists. I had expected the popular Dean of the Law School, Elena Kagan, to win in the end. If she had, I think it is safe to say that it would have extinguished all hope of the Law School’s moving to Allston. Harvard desires to expand its science divisions and develop institutes for things like stem cell research, and the best place for these new buildings is as close to the Yard as possible. Scientists benefit from being around other scientists, where they can share instrumentation and exchange ideas. This is especially important for “interdisciplinary” research, like the kind that we’ll probably see at the proposed Origins-of-Life Institute.

The problem is that there’s no open space in Harvard Square. One solution is for the Law School to move to a brand new campus in Allston, near to the current location of the business school. This would leave plenty of room for expansion of the science departments, and it makes sense because there is no reason that HLS needs to be close to the Yard. They are an isolated, self-sustaining community, whereas the College counts on science professors and grad students to teach courses in the vicinity of the Yard.

To make a long story short, the Law School put up a big stink when the Summers administration floated this idea, and Larry backed off. I hope Faust gives the issue a second look, because if she doesn’t, it is going to stink for the future generations of grad students who will have to hop on a shuttle bus to teach orgo lab.