ChemBark

A video of a new wheelchair has been making the rounds this week, and it’s pretty cool. The device allows you to either sit or stand while moving:

The first thing that crossed my mind on seeing this video is how useful such a device would be for someone disabled who wanted to work in a lab. Yes, there are adaptations you can make to laboratories such that someone in a (seated) wheelchair can work, but I have never actually seen a facility with them. And what is to be done about shared instrumentation? Do the able-bodied people in the lab have to work on lower benches, or does the student in the wheelchair need to find a way to elevate himself?

It doesn’t require a stretch of the imagination to see how a wheelchair-bound student could be very successful in computational research without too much difficulty, but it seems like a disabled student who aspires to conduct “wet” chemistry would have a much more difficult time. The experimental work typical of graduate school is inherently solitary, and even with modifications like reduced-height hoods, a wheelchair-bound student is still going to run into all sorts of problems that will hinder independence. For instance, how do you insert samples into an NMR spectrometer? How do you reach the top shelf in the stockroom? How do you swap out an expired nitrogen cylinder? How can you carry things from building to building?

If you are an aspiring basketball player or construction worker, a spinal-cord injury means giving up your dreams. The cold, hard facts dictate that you will not be able to contribute to these endeavors in a significant way. But as far as chemistry goes, being in a wheelchair doesn’t fatally disqualify someone from being a professor or industrial group leader. You can still think, write, talk, and teach just as well in a chair as you can standing. What’s tough is that in order to earn your way into such a position, you are going to have to tackle two phases of solitary, physically-demanding experimental work as a graduate student and postdoc.

In all my years in academia, never have I encountered a single wheelchair-bound undergraduate chemistry major, graduate student in chemistry (experimental or computational), postdoc, or professor under the age of 80. I have heard of one chemist (Todd Blumenkopf of Pfizer) who went through graduate school and a postdoc in wet labs (Berkeley, then Irvine). That isn’t to say there aren’t other examples, but they seem to be very, very rare.

It seems like anyone who wants to be a group leader in an experimental field is going to have to find a way to perform lab work. Maybe assistive devices like the TekRMD will open the door for a class of people who would otherwise be reluctant to attempt to climb the ivory tower or industrial ladder.

This is going to get ugly.

The United Kingdom’s EPSRC—akin to the NSF in the United States—is going to slash the funding of research in synthetic organic chemistry.  In response, the country’s synthetic organic chemists have taken to the streets and set fire to several buildings written a short letter to Prime Minister David Cameron expressing their frustration.

This battle has been shaping up for a long time, and it looks as though it is finally coming to a head.   I think there are tenable arguments in support of both sides of the issue; any decision simply boils down to where your priorities lie.

On the anti-synthesis side, you have those who feel that organic synthesis has reached an area of diminishing returns.  Proponents of the cuts will argue that organic synthesis is a mature field where new advances are modest and unlikely to have major industrial applications.  You also have those who believe that total synthesis—which still seems to constitute a major focus of research in this field—is a largely fruitless exercise where molecules ostensibly made for potential therapeutic activity are actually made just for the sake of making nasty-looking molecules.

While many people do question whether organic synthesis is still interesting, the strongest argument against it probably runs closer to a cost-benefit analysis…  Yes, synthesis can be interesting, but science funding is a zero-sum game and there are other areas of research that are more interesting and/or valuable to society.  I have to think that the recent downturn in the pharmaceutical industry—including the shuttering of Pfizer’s R&D operation in Sandwich—probably strengthens this argument.  The supporters of the budget realignment can argue that we should scale down the training of synthetic chemists now that there are fewer jobs for them.  There are also people who believe that the demise of natural products synthesis in academia has been unreasonably delayed by the historical popularity of the field and the large population of practicing synthetic chemists who stand to benefit by protecting it (e.g., making sure grants for it get funded, etc.)

On the pro-synthesis (anti-realignment) side, you have those who defend the field by pointing out its historical importance, its sustained popularity, its direct applicability to industry, and its potential application in medicine.  With respect to the new criteria for funding, pro-synthesis people can argue the chemistry projects that should be funded are the ones that represent the best science—regardless of the sub-field.  In other words, the synthetic projects that were funded in the past were funded because they were the best projects proposed.  Slashing funding to synthesis will leave these talented chemists out in the cold and will lead to the funding of scientifically inferior projects in other sub-disciplines of chemistry.

Another argument against the realignment in funding is that politicians are messing with scientific funding based on possible misperceptions about various projects’ potential economic value.  The letter to Cameron stresses that the government is overlooking the many contributions of organic synthesis to the UK’s economy.  It should also be noted that EPSRC’s definition of “synthetic organic chemistry” goes beyond total synthesis to include areas like supramolecular chemistry.

It’ll be interesting to see how this battle ends.  If one thing is certain, it is that governments are becoming less shy about dictating how science funding is allocated.  That is, legislators are getting more involved in selecting what types of projects can (and can’t) be funded.  Many people feel that the decision of what science projects to fund should be left to scientists, who are experts in their fields, but the fact of the matter is that science funding is an appropriation of taxpayer money.  Legislators—who are elected by the taxpayers to act in their proxy—definitely have the authority to place specific constraints on science funding and are not necessarily acting against the best interests of society by limiting how this money is spent.

If nothing else, this latest news provides yet another reason for chemists not to ignore the broader public when it comes to justifying their work and communicating its value.

What a fantastic State of the Union address by the president.  In case you missed it, the word of the night was “innovation”.  You will recall that the word popped up repeatedly during our December roundtable on jobs and the future of chemistry.  It’s nice to hear the same sentiment rattling around the nerve center of our government.

When you are the economy in the lead, the only way to maintain your distance from the field is to continually develop new technology.  Doing so “grows the pie” such that you can sustain your own growth in the face of rising competition.  If we fail to grow the pie, other countries will eventually eat into our slice.

From the speech:

Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik¸ we had no idea how we’d beat them to the moon. The science wasn’t there yet. NASA didn’t even exist.  But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.

This is our generation’s Sputnik moment. Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the Space Race. In a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal.  We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology – an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.

While there is certainly an undertone of gloom in this passage, I’d probably have been more explicit.  The truth is that if the solution to cheap energy is not developed in the United States, we are going to have big problems in maintaining our world superiority.  Big problems.  To me, research on clean energy technology is every bit as much about national security as it is about helping our economy or the environment.

Of course, the hard part falls to us: the people in the trenches.  That’s an exciting (and humbling) responsibility.  Speaking of excitement, I nearly soiled my pants when a mere 15 minutes into his speech, Obama let loose with this:

That’s what Americans have done for over two hundred years: reinvented ourselves. And to spur on more success stories like the Allen Brothers, we’ve begun to reinvent our energy policy. We’re not just handing out money. We’re issuing a challenge.  We’re telling America’s scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean energy, we’ll fund the Apollo Projects of our time.

At the California Institute of Technology, they’re developing a way to turn sunlight and water into fuel for our cars.

“Hooooooly Sh’t!!  That’s us!!”  Mom saw it and was pleased.  You can’t ask for much more than that.

You’ve probably gathered from the other posts on employment that I think the idea of academic tenure in chemistry is stupid.  Before I launch into another sermonic editorial that is the hallmark of ChemBark, let me save you the trouble of reading the rest of the 2000-word post so you can just skip ahead to the comments, invent a clever screenname, and use it to call me an idiot. 

To cut to the chase, the concept of tenure doesn’t pass the smell test:

1.  Why should schools grant professors lifetime job security just because they performed well over the first 20% of their careers?

2.  If the academic freedom ostensibly offered by tenure is really so important for professors to do their jobs, then how can we expect assistant professors to perform well without tenure?

(And just because I enjoy answering rhetorical questions:  1. They shouldn’t.  2. Academic freedom isn’t really that important in chemistry, and tenure doesn’t really protect it.)

While the issue is more complex, tenure certainly seems fishy on first inspection.

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The Benefits of Tenure

To judge tenure on the merits, it’s important to know its strengths.  The fundamental motivation for the system is the protection of academic freedom for professors.  The idea is that with near complete job security, professors will be free to express controversial ideas and conduct research on unpopular subjects without fear of career-crippling retribution.  The system also promotes honesty in that professors need not be afraid to report unpopular results and conclusions.

Tenure systems also offer several ancillary benefits.  The job security provided by tenure is a form of compensation that allows universities to get away with offering lower salaries than other employers.  The job security may also promote collegiality within departments, because professors with secure jobs won’t feel like they’re in competition with their colleagues.

There are plenty of things to like about the idea of tenure.  I’m not arguing that these aren’t substantive benefits, just that they don’t outweigh the costs of the system.

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The Costs of Tenure

The main problem with tenure is in the way it restricts how a university can restructure its academic workforce.  Firing tenured professors is nearly impossible—even when they do something as heinous as committing extensive scientific misconduct.  Unfortunately, this one straightforward problem has a number of profound implications:

Schools can’t terminate underperforming professors.  I don’t think we need to conduct a thorough quantitative analysis of publications and grant awards to agree that practically every department in the country has one or more underperforming tenured professors.  These people often had distinguished careers as assistant profs, then either lost it or took their feet off the gas.  In many cases, these same professors are also dreadful teachers, meaning that they contribute next to nothing to the department.  The obvious solution to correcting the problem—getting rid of the employee—is impossible thanks to tenure.  For the problem to be fixed, you have to improve the individual, but…

The award of tenure ends a major incentive for professors to perform.  After the big step up to tenure is achieved, all subsequent incentives pale in comparison.  Yes, there are endowed professorships and such, but there is also the fact that you can’t be fired for slacking, so slacking isn’t really such a big deal.  As for negative incentives—the stick instead of the carrot—deans have the ability to take lab space away from underperforming professors, but by that point, do they really care?  And what can be done to poor teachers?  Nothing.

Tenure gives schools less flexibility to deal with budget crises.  I don’t have any nice charts like Chemjobber or Leigh, but I’ve got to believe that professorial salaries increase with increasing length of employment.  There’s a good chance that dead-weight tenured professors are also raking in fat salaries.  Unfortunately, when budgets have to be trimmed in times of economic hardship, these obvious cuts are not possible.  As a result, schools have to resort to moves like raising tuition, slashing operational expenses, laying off staff, hiring fewer tenure-track professors, or cancelling assistant professor searches altogether.

Tenure fosters stagnation.  We hear so much that the key to sustaining growth in developed economies is innovation.  If that is the case—and I think it is—why maintain a tenure-based system that protects people who fail to innovate? 

Tenure prevents departments from removing professors who grow to become contemptible for reasons that have nothing to do with exercising academic freedom.  These loathsome people include awful teachers, poor advisors, purveyors of misconduct, and plain ol’ worthless jerks.

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Revisiting the Benefits

Returning to the concept of academic freedom, I recognize that there are employment sectors for which the nature of the work demands job security for employees to function effectively.  I want judges to make decisions based on what is right and fair, not based on what is politically popular.  In academia, there are a number of politically-charged areas in which tenure may be a necessity (e.g., the study of Jewish-Muslim history and policy).

But let’s focus on chemistry.  What subjects in chemistry demand the sort of protection that tenure offers?  If academic freedom to express unpopular ideas is so important to chemistry, please tell me who’s using this freedom to stand up for unpopular ideas they believe in.  What are these sensitive, politically-charged subjects?  Climate change?  The importance of nanoputians?  Who is considered a controversial chemist?  Nothing that earth-shaking comes to mind, but maybe I’m missing something.

In general, the results typically reported in chemistry journals don’t attract the ire of the public and raise political rancor, so tenure seems unnecessary.  But what about “behind closed doors”?  Without tenure, might an otherwise candid professor be afraid to express a potentially unpopular opinion in a faculty meeting?  For example, expressing the opinion that natural product synthesis is “dead” because the opinion could make him a target of the department’s synthetic chemists?  I suppose this is possible—and would love some input from professors if these discussions take place in faculty meetings—but it doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal.  If it is truly a problem, you could help solve it by holding secret votes at faculty meetings.

While chemists, like all human beings, can descend into petty bickering and payback, in most cases, we are much more reasonable than the general population and respond to logic and data.  If the possibility of the formation of rogue alliances of professors to save their dying areas of research is the keystone of the argument for why we should keep tenure, I’m not terribly impressed.  And if tenure really bestowed professors with the ability to express ideas that are unpopular to their colleagues, then referee reports and grant evaluations wouldn’t have to be distributed anonymously.

The concept of academic freedom is also embodied in the idea that professors are free to pursue controversial or unpopular lines of research.  I question whether tenure offers this protection to chemists, at all.  In reality, funding is what restricts freedom in this area.  The desire to work on a problem is one thing, but if you actually want to get anything done, you’re going to have to convince someone to fund the work.  Tenure’s not going to protect you there.

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The Way Forward without Tenure

So, in my opinion, the benefits of tenure in the world of academic chemistry do not justify the costs.  The tenure-track system should be phased out for the benefit of the field.  How should we go about doing this?

First, let’s note that any attempt to change the system is going to create a big stink.  Faculties are going to hate this change and they’ll fight it.  Even if you make it clear that you only want to end tenure for chemistry professors, the other departments will see the writing on the wall and attempt to prevent even the slightest incursion.

And any change would take decades to filter through the system.  Tenured professors (and those assistant professors on a tenure track) would need to be grandfathered in for legal reasons.  For new hires, instead of completely eliminating durable job security, I like the idea of offering reasonably long-termed contracts (e.g., of ten years).  Every ten years, the candidate would be re-evaluated for renewal.  Such a term would provide an element of job security without the long-term risk to the school (the person you hire today stands a greater chance of being different forty years down the road than ten years down the road.)

Without tenure, will schools have trouble recruiting assistant professors?  I don’t think so.  Every academic position that gets listed in C&EN attracts hundreds of applications from plenty of talented young scientists who are energetic and itching to test their ideas.  I can’t imagine that replacing the opportunity of getting tenure with ten-year contract renewals is going to change much.  And if it does, you can offer different compensation that is associated with less risk to the university.  For instance, larger salaries.  Hell, you could pay for these increases (and then some) by not renewing the contracts of underperforming professors who’ve amassed ridiculous annual salaries.

Will schools all have to end tenure in a concerted process in order for the transition to work?  I don’t think so.  Obviously, a school that unilaterally ends tenure might be worried about losing prospective assistant professors to schools that still grant tenure, but there are other incentives that can be used to sweeten job offers.  And while early-enders may take an initial hit on ability to recruit, they will also be the first to benefit from the flexibility a new system would offer.  That could prove a competitive advantage against late-adopters down the road.  I don’t think schools should be worried that all of academia will have to march in lockstep to get this done. 

Without tenure, will a school have a more difficult time attracting and retaining top faculty?  Maybe, but granting someone tenure doesn’t mean they’re going to stick with you anyway.  A quick glance at the top 25 living chemists by H-index shows plenty of movement:  Whitesides (#1, MIT to Harvard), Corey (#3, Illinois to Harvard), Schreiber (#14, Yale to Harvard to Broad), Frechet (#16, Ottawa to Cornell to Cal), Gray (#21, Columbia to Caltech), Evans (#22, UCLA to Caltech to Harvard), Lippard (#22, Columbia to MIT), and Zare (#22, MIT to Colorado to Columbia to Stanford).  And do I think these guys would be scared of not getting renewed contracts if tenure didn’t exist?  No. 

So, will the end of tenure come anytime soon?  No way.  The system of higher education in the US perceives itself as, by far and away, the greatest in the world.  So long as that is the case, I don’t see it making significant changes.  The end of tenure will probably require an absolute meltdown in terms of funding or the manifest superiority of a foreign system that is substantively different in how it operates. 

Finally, if any chemists are in need of tenure, maybe it’s bloggers.  Blogs seem to be the most visible vehicles for raising uncomfortable—but necessary—discussions on topics such as scientific misconduct, shoddy experimental work, and deficiencies of the status quo.  On second thought, that’s a bad idea.  There are plenty of bloggers who have become lazy and no longer post that often.  I’m glad we can stop paying for their services at any time.

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Next up on Chemjobs Week is Matt at ScienceGeist.  (And, for the record, he is not a lazy blogger).

I keep a spare change of clothes in my office for two reasons:

1)  The possibility of a lab accident

2)  The possibility that I’ll think about having to venture into the job market next year

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This week, I’ll be participating in a chemistry-blog roundtable discussion on the future of jobs in chemistry.  Every day, a different blog will host the discussion.  The scheduled slate of topics is as follows:

Monday:  ChemJobber will discuss the academic labor market in science

Tuesday:  Just Another Electron Pusher will tackle the question of whether academia is producing too many PhDs in chemistry

Wednesday:  I’ll be discussing why the idea of tenure for chemistry professors is stupid

Thursday:  ScienceGeist will discuss what policy changes should be instituted to address problems in this area.

Friday:  ChemJobber will host a recap

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So…unless something crazy happens, Wednesday’s post will be it for me this week.  I’ll see y’all in the comment threads at the other blogs.

Quick question…well, questions…

What is it like to work as a Ph.D. chemist in a national lab?

• How are chemists organized?  In research groups?  Where do you start out as a Ph.D.?
• How much leeway do you get in deciding what problems to work on?
• Do you apply for grants?  How does it compare to academia in this regard?
• Are you staffed with B.S./M.S. chemists?
• How are the facilities/instrumentation (in general)?
• What kind of working hours do people usually keep?
• Are you required to publish?
• Are you ever prevented from publishing?
• How are IP issues handled?
• How is performance evaluated?
• Do you get to go to conferences often?
• How does the salary measure up?
• What things are particularly good and bad about the job?