Repeated use of this NY Fed report really bothers me

 Among many offenders, this New York Times article about new college grad unemployment: 

Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1 percent and 7.5 percent respectively, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3 percent.

It's really disappointing to me that no one clicks through the website and scrolls down to see this fine print:

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (IPUMS).

Notes: Figures are for 2023. Unemployment and underemployment rates are for recent college graduates (that is, those aged 22 to 27 with a bachelor's degree or higher), and median wages are for full-time workers with a bachelor's degree only. Early career graduates are those aged 22 to 27, and mid-career graduates are those aged 35 to 45. Graduate degree share is based on the adult working-age population (that is, those aged 25 to 65) with a bachelor's degree or higher. All figures exclude those currently enrolled in school. Data are updated annually at the beginning of each calendar year.

I think it's important to note that the numbers are from 2023, which means that the numbers are of somewhat less relevance (although probably still the best available numbers) compared to the spring grads of 2025. In addition, if you're a grad between ages of 22 and 27 in 2023, you have COVID (20-21) right in the middle there. In addition, for all of the people who are pointing out that history majors have better unemployment (4.6%) than computer science majors (6.1%), I'm going to point out that I'd take my chances to get a $80,000 median salary (CS) rather than a $45,000 one (history.) 

After watching the numbers for over 10 years, I think it is amazing that reporters and commentators still can't get this stuff down pat. A shame

(Let's also not forget that this is American Community Survey data, which is pretty darn good, but still, how many new history grads are in that pool of ~3 million Americans surveyed?) 

"In 150 characters or fewer, tell us what makes you unique."

Seen here

Seen in this Achaogen ad for a postdoctoral position, this delightful requirement: 

In 150 characters or fewer, tell us what makes you unique. Try to be creative and say something that will catch our eye!

Amusingly, "screw you" is just 9 characters.  

This Craig Lindsley op-ed is worth reading, and worth some skepticism

"We can ill afford another Klendathu, and/or the death of basic science."**
credit: wikia

Via Tehshik Yoon's Twitter feed, an interesting op-ed by Professor Craig Lindsley in ACS Chemical Neuroscience on the apparent favoring of translational science over basic science. I take issue with the opening quote from Genentech's Dr. Wendy Young: 

“The pharma and biotech industry has heavily relied on academia to train the next generation of synthetic chemists. Without duly trained synthetic ‘jocks’, our drug discovery efforts and innovation in the United States will dwindle. Without question, innovation has been a core strength of the United States, and this is due to the training in deep basic science.”

Surely there is no other reason for drug discovery efforts in the United States to dwindle. 

(I am in agreement with Dr. Young (and the quotes from Professors Baran, Corey and Buchwald) that academia provides the raw material for industrial drug discoverers i.e. new Ph.D.s in organic chemistry. I don't see that decreasing any time soon, but perhaps I am wrong - only time will tell.) 

I should lay out my priors here and say that I agree with Professor Lindsley's basic point: "We can ill afford the death of basic science." The overall flattening of NIH funding is not A Good Thing in the long run.* Also, I prefer that the federal government bias its funding towards basic science, as opposed to "translational research." The United States has a long history of reaping vast rewards from studying basic science, and it's not clear to me that translational research has nearly the same track record. 

But here's what I want to know, and what I feel is missing from Professor Lindsley's op-ed: what are the numbers surrounding federal academic funding of organic chemistry? Is there evidence that "...in the last 10 years that research funding for basic organic chemistry and/or molecular pharmacology is in rapid decline"? Also, Professor Baran says that the decrease is disproportional. I believe the former, and I could believe the latter, but the trends aren't clear to me. Where can this data be found? 

Finally, if it is true that there has been a disproportionate decrease, who is the audience for these complaints? Who sets funding priorities at NIH? Seems to me it's probably a conversation between the the relevant Congressional committee and senior leadership at NIH? Who should we be yelling at? 

*I could easily imagine altering NIH funding mechanisms to both accommodate an increase in NIH funding, and not generate a surplus of new Ph.D. chemists, but this blog post is too small to contain an explanation of it. 

**reference to Starship Troopers

Nope

From here: "Your acceptance into a PhD program puts you in the top 5% of the general populace in terms of academic ability, so don't ever forget that." 

No, I don't believe that at all. 

(The rest of it is fairly anodyne advice.) 

What happens to assistant professors who go into industry?

Professor Carolyn Bertozzi is the editor-in-chief of ACS Central Science, one of ACS's newer journals and the first that is entirely open-access. She has written a number of opening columns, and they're all worth reading and considering (how often do I get hear the internal thoughts of someone who is a heck of a lot closer to a trip to Stockholm than I ever will be?). Here's an interesting aside from her most recent column, which is about the dearth of senior women chemistry faculty: 

With autonomy comes responsibility, of course, and many people will count on you to keep the ship afloat and headed in the right direction. Occasionally women articulate to me that such responsibility looms large in their mind, that their aversion to academia is rooted in a fear of judgment and failure. In response, I share with them what my dad said to me when I once admitted these feelings. First, he reminded me of the first time he handed me the keys to the car, and I peeled out of the driveway without concern for the depth of my qualification. Then the conversation went like this:

Dad: “You got your own lab? Go for it. What do you have to lose?”
Me: “What if I can’t get grants funded?”
Dad: “So what, as long as you still get paid. Try again.”
Me: “What if I don’t get tenure?”
Dad: “So what, it is still a good starter job that builds skills for many other (higher paying) jobs.” 

He was right about that. My friends who didn’t get that coveted promotion jumped into high-level industrial positions they could never have acquired had they started their career in that same company. You see, after six years running a lab in academia, they had project and budget management experience. They had done HR, PR, and built a valuable network of colleagues and collaborators. No age-matched bench chemist in industry could develop that portfolio of skills at the same pace.

It is the last sentence that I would like to examine. Is this actually true? Far be it from me to doubt Professor Bertozzi's superior years of experience to mine own, but I find this to be a tiny bit skepticism-inducing. I suspect that it depends on the definition of "my friends" and "high-level". Also, is it really true that "no age-matched bench chemist in industry could develop that portfolio of skills?" I think there's plenty of argument to be made that industry is just as good at academia at forcing collaboration, and growing project and budget management experience.

(This draws me to another aside, and another CJ-like complaint about the lack of solid data about job cohorts: what happens to untenured assistant professors of chemistry? Where do they go? What do they end up doing? Do they actually go straight to "group leader" or "director" in industry? Rather than relying on the opinions of prominent chemical biologists or random bloggers, wouldn't it be great if we just knew, i.e. had a database somewhere?)

Readers, your thoughts? Is there enough anecdata out there to support this? 

There might have been something else going on....

In the midst of an interesting article about peak phosphorus, an interesting statement: 

Phosphorus is not a renewable resource 

Reserves are limited and not equally spread over the planet. The only large mines are located in Morocco, Russia, China and the US. Depending on which scientists you ask, the world’s phosphate rock reserves will last for another 35 to 400 years – though the more optimistic assessments rely on the discovery of new deposits. 

It’s a big concern for the EU and other countries without their own reserves, and phosphorus depletion could lead to geopolitical tensions. Back in 2008, when fertiliser prices sharply increased by 600% and directly influenced food prices, there were violent riots in 40 different developing countries.

Seems to me there might have been a recession or something going on then?

(I get that it's all interconnected, but it seems to me that the real issue was the incredibly high price of oil at the time...) 

Sunday conversation: STS winner != Nobel Prize winner

From the New York Times and its book advertisements thinkpieces, a really dumb conclusion from Wharton professor Adam Evans:

THEY learn to read at age 2, play Bach at 4, breeze through calculus at 6, and speak foreign languages fluently by 8. Their classmates shudder with envy; their parents rejoice at winning the lottery. But to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, their careers tend to end not with a bang, but with a whimper. 

Consider the nation’s most prestigious award for scientifically gifted high school students, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, called the Super Bowl of science by one American president. From its inception in 1942 until 1994, the search recognized more than 2000 precocious teenagers as finalists. But just 1 percent ended up making the National Academy of Sciences, and just eight have won Nobel Prizes. For every Lisa Randall who revolutionizes theoretical physics, there are many dozens who fall far short of their potential...

Wait a minute, is this guy actually arguing that all STS winners have the potential to be Nobel Prize winners? That is a wildly wrong statement; what if a STS winner chooses to be an undergraduate biology professor? No chance of a Nobel there - are they falling short of their potential? This is also evidence to me that Professor Evans has no idea about what it takes to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences.

Here's his concluding paragraphs:

Evidence shows that creative contributions depend on the breadth, not just depth, of our knowledge and experience. In fashion, the most original collections come from directors who spend the most time working abroad. In science, winning a Nobel Prize is less about being a single-minded genius and more about being interested in many things. Relative to typical scientists, Nobel Prize winners are 22 times more likely to perform as actors, dancers or magicians; 12 times more likely to write poetry, plays or novels; seven times more likely to dabble in arts and crafts; and twice as likely to play an instrument or compose music. 

No one is forcing these luminary scientists to get involved in artistic hobbies. It’s a reflection of their curiosity. And sometimes, that curiosity leads them to flashes of insight. “The theory of relativity occurred to me by intuition, and music is the driving force behind this intuition,” Albert Einstein reflected. His mother enrolled him in violin lessons starting at age 5, but he wasn’t intrigued. His love of music only blossomed as a teenager, after he stopped taking lessons and stumbled upon Mozart’s sonatas. “Love is a better teacher than a sense of duty,” he said. 

Hear that, Tiger Moms and Lombardi Dads? You can’t program a child to become creative. Try to engineer a certain kind of success, and the best you’ll get is an ambitious robot. If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that art helps people become creative or think differently, but I think this is a lot of post hoc reasoning meant to sell the author's book. 

Aldrich = Amazon?

Also in this week's C&EN, Marc Reisch writes about Sigma-Aldrich's completed purchase by Merck KGAa with this interesting little paragraph: 

Among the Sigma services that Merck coveted was a Web-based laboratory supply store that, according to Batra, is not unlike the consumer goods operation run by the Web retailer Amazon. 

A scientist who arrives on Sigma’s website looking for an obscure intermediate will also be offered related intermediates and access to relevant research papers, Batra says. Before long, that scientist might have three or four items in the checkout cart, making for a more substantial order for Sigma. Twenty-four-hour delivery service allows the scientist to advance her research project more rapidly, he explains.

So the CEO of Millipore thinks that people go to Sigma and click on their suggested links, while they're ordering some Trifluoromethylator (the Burninator!). So maybe he knows his site much better than I do, but let me assure you this - the number of times I've been convinced to buy something on Aldrich's site while shopping for something else is on the order of zero.

Readers, your experiences? Maybe I'm weird. 

The worst post-hoc reasoning you will read today: Mythbusters increased the number of students in STEM

From the august pages of the New York Times, an op-ed in support of an admittedly great show, Mythbusters, and some really bad reasoning:

...When the show started, the image of science and engineering in mainstream culture was at a low ebb. [snip] 

...Academic interest in science was in similar decline: Barely 20 percent of college freshmen were signing up for majors in science, technology, engineering and math, known as STEM fields — continuing a long downward trend. 

“MythBusters” helped reverse that trend not by gussying science up, but by taking it seriously. “... 

...Best of all, a study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that the number of college freshmen enrolling in STEM majors has climbed nearly 50 percent since 2005. If a few more kids today want to grow up to be Elon Musk or settle on Mars or cure cancer, we have Jamie and Adam partly to thank....

 From the Inside Higher Ed article by Scott Jaschik that the op-ed links to (emphasis mine):

Using data collected by UCLA, Jacobs and Sax write that from 1997 through 2005, the proportion of freshmen planning to enroll in STEM fields declined, hitting a low in 2005 of 20.7 percent. After modest gains in 2006 and 2007, real increases started to show up in 2008. The percentage of freshmen planning to major in STEM increased from 21.1 percent in 2007 to 28.2 percent in 2011, just as the recession was prompting many students and families to focus on the job potential of various fields of study. That represents a 48 percent increase in just a few years.

What was happening in 2008? Could it be the Great Recession? Gee, I dunno.... 

It is a myth that people have seven careers in their lifetime

I was surprised the other day to hear a knowledgeable person repeat the old saw that "the typical person has seven careers in their lifetime." Here's a 2010 Wall Street Journal article saying what we all knew - it's not true: 

Do Americans really go through careers like they do cars or refrigerators? 

As workers take in the latest round of monthly unemployment data over Labor Day weekend, Americans are focused on volatility in the job market. Much of what they hear points to growing job instability and increased autonomy of workers. Among the most-repeated claims is that the average U.S. worker will have many careers—seven is the most widely cited number—in his or her lifetime. 

Jobs researchers say the basis of the number is a mystery. "Seven careers per person sounds utterly implausible to me," says Ann Stevens, professor and chair of the economics department at the University of California, Davis.

Here's the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Does BLS have information on the number of times people change careers in their lives? 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) never has attempted to estimate the number of times people change careers in the course of their working lives. The reason we have not produced such estimates is that no consensus has emerged on what constitutes a career change. A few examples may help to illustrate the difficulty of defining careers and career changes. Take the case of a BLS economist who is promoted to a management position. Before the promotion, she spent most of her time conducting economic research. After the promotion to the management position, she still may conduct research, but she also spends much more time supervising staff and reviewing their research, managing her program's finances, and attending to a variety of other management tasks. This promotion represents an occupational change from economist to manager, but does it also represent a career change? It depends on how you define a career change. 

Did a construction worker who decided to start his own home-remodeling business experience a career change? What about a newspaper reporter who became a TV news anchor? Each of these examples involves a change in occupation, industry, or both, but do they represent career changes? Most people probably would agree that a medical doctor who quits to become a comedian experienced a career change, but most "career changes" probably are not so dramatic. 

What about the case of a web site designer who was laid off from a job, worked for six months for a lawn-care service, and then found a new job as a web site designer? Might that example constitute two career changes? If not, why not? Is spending six months at the lawn-care service long enough to consider that a career? How long must one stay in a particular line of work before it can be called a career? 

Until a consensus emerges among economists, sociologists, career-guidance professionals, and other labor market observers about the appropriate criteria that should be used for defining careers and career changes, BLS and other statistical organizations will not be able to produce estimates on the number of times people change careers in their lives.

 Short answer: it's not true. 

You can't stop from getting drunk by eating yeast before drinking

Via the Chemistry Reddit, an article from Esquire that is likely to be really, really wrong (emphasis mine): 

Koch told me that for years he has swallowed your standard Fleischmann's dry yeast before he drinks, stirring the white powdery substance in with some yogurt to make it more palatable. 

"One teaspoon per beer, right before you start drinking." 

He'd learned the trick from his good friend "Dr. Joe," a craft beer legend in his own right. Educated at Harvard with a troika of degrees (a BA, a JD, and an MBA), Koch is no slouch, but the late-Joseph Owades was a flat-out genius. With a PhD in biochemistry from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and an early job in the fermentation sciences department at Fleischmann's, Owades probably knew more about fermentation and alcohol metabolism than perhaps any man who has ever lived. Koch calls him, in fact, "The best brewer who's ever lived." He used that immense knowledge to eventually become a consultant for most of the progenitors of America's early craft brewing movement such as Anchor Brewing in San Francisco, New Amsterdam Brewing in New York, and, yes, the Boston Beer Company. There he became good friends with Koch, helped perfect Boston Lager, and passed on to Koch his little yeast secret. 

You see, what Owades knew was that active dry yeast has an enzyme in it called alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH). Roughly put, ADH is able to break alcohol molecules down into their constituent parts of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Which is the same thing that happens when your body metabolizes alcohol in its liver. Owades realized if you also have that enzyme in your stomach when the alcohol first hits it, the ADH will begin breaking it down before it gets into your bloodstream and, thus, your brain. 

"And it will mitigate – not eliminate – but mitigate the effects of alcohol!" Koch told me.

I think this is wildly wrong. Almost all enzymes are temperature- and pH-dependent. That is to say, they work best (transforming chemical starting materials to product, or vice versa) when they are in a certain pH range and temperature. I find it unlikely that yeast alcohol dehydrogenase works well in the highly acidic environment of the stomach. Also, why would the enzymes in the stomach (pepsin, etc.) fail to digest the yeast?

Note for people who find this via Google: this advice is almost certainly wrong. Dr. Owades was probably incorrect; if you take yeast with your beer, it will probably have no effect on your blood alcohol level.

(While we're at it, has anyone heard of an alcohol cure where it's a combination of hard candies and pure oxygen? This must be an urban legend as well.) 

"I bet your life", cannabis chemistry edition

From the inbox, a Guardian article from a cannabis conference in Portland, Oregon: 

Paul Loney, with offices in Portland and Ashland, in the state’s far south, has a practice in transition. “I used to do a lot of criminal defence,” he says, but since legalisation a lot of enforcement has simply stopped. “Now I help people with compliance.” 

They also need to carry out lab testing – some because the state demands it (laws forbid the use of certain pesticides), some because of consumer demand for guaranteed purity and potency. Cannabis labs already provide employment for biologists and chemists; what’s now a cottage industry will soon grow along with the industry. 

If you want to make guaranteed money from pot, go to law school or get your masters in industrial chemistry. 

Color me skeptical. I think the likeliest way to earn guaranteed money from pot is at your local college campus doing door-to-door distribution.

(Where does one get a master's degree in "industrial chemistry", anyway? Is there a single program in the United States that offers such a degree?* 

(*Google tells me I am wrong: there are two such programs, one at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Texas, both "professional science master's" programs. An interesting idea, but probably not really all that different than any other state university master's program, for those who find this post via Google.) 

3D printers can't print nuclear weapons - but they can cause a lot of public confusion

Imagine my bemusement when I saw this Washingon Post article on Twitter, titled "You can print your own guns at home. Next it will be nuclear weapons. Really.", written by LSU political science professor Daniel C. Tirone and his graduate student, James Gilley. Here's the relevant paragraph:

When should we expect to see WMDs that can be printed at home? 

...Most important, laboratories have already printed at the molecular level using base atoms — which can lead to printing nuclear materials. Such printing will probably migrate out of the lab within 20 to 30 years. These trends will accelerate with improved printer resolution and advances in the types of materials used. Within the past two decades, 3-D printers have gone from being formidably expensive laboratory instruments to desktop boxes that cost less than $1,500. Prices will keep dropping as the technology advances, so private users will one day be able to afford more complex printers that can produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

After some conversation on Twitter where chemists (including Barney Grubbs) began to critique the author, the article was changed to read the following:

...Most important, laboratories have already printed at the molecular level. Continuing progress in this area could allow for subatomic printing using the basic components of atoms – which can lead to printing nuclear materials. Such printing will probably migrate out of the lab within 20 to 30 years. 

You will be wildly amused to discover that the link to "printed at the molecular level" links to an article in a student newspaper describing UIUC chemistry professor Martin Burke's flow synthesizer in rather breathless terms as a 3D printer of molecules.

Where to start?

First, Tirone and Gilley's prediction is very, very unlikely to come to pass. It belies a complete lack of understanding of the science behind 3D printing. I think Prof. Grubbs has done a much better job explaining it than I ever could, so I think folks should go over there for his explanation.

I have a different question: why does 3D printing make people speculate so wildly?

This is not the only case. Prof. Lee Cronin's work making 3D printed reactionware set off a lot of press about the 3D printing of medicine. I learned about Cambrian Genomics' technology because a Wall Street Journal interview with a manufacturing expert described them this way: "They built a machine that 3-D prints DNA."  Nope, not so.

I think the answer may be that 3D printing seems both futuristic and tangible enough that people can imagine the different things that can be done with it, even if they are not economically feasible or even scientifically plausible.

The Burke team did indeed reference 3D printing in both the HHMI and UIUC press releases. They did not make the claim that the Burke synthesizer was a 3D printer, but that did not stop the popular press from running with this incorrect analogy. Should we ignore the inevitable misunderstandings, or should we prevent them from happening in the first place? What words should evince caution before they are used by public information officers and principal investigators? "Cure" is one - I think I have a case that "3D printer" is another.  

Biotech cluster setup? Don't even bother.

Through a short summary from FierceBiotech's Nick Paul Taylor, I see that the Los Angeles Times is covering former Governor Jeb Bush's attempt to set up a biotech cluster around Scripps Florida (article by Noah Bierman): 

...He called a rare special session of the Legislature to approve the state’s share of the Scripps package — $310 million plus interest over 10 years — and won easy approval from the county government to spend more than $200 million. To make his case, he circulated a five-page economic impact study that said Florida could build a biotech economy every bit as impressive as the one that took decades to germinate in San Diego, only faster and bigger, with potential to add more than 40,000 jobs within 15 years of operation. 

Twelve years later, those dreams have not come true. 

Florida employed 27,611 people in biotech last year, according to the state’s Department of Economic Opportunity, or just 952 more people than it did in 2007, the last year for which the state has comparable data. Scripps accounts for many of those jobs, with a head count of 646 people in Florida. 

The data do show a doubling in the number of biotech establishments. And Scripps says it has attracted $425 million in federal grants and donations. 

But the promise of Florida’s investment was about a jobs bonanza from spinoff companies. 

Bush was captivated by the Scripps headquarters in La Jolla, a tony San Diego suburb where 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney owns a home. The institute and its satellite offices are located along Torrey Pines Road, a verdant stretch connecting it to the famed golf course of the same name as well as sandstone coastal bluffs and the ocean. The biotech boom around Scripps is hard to miss. Science and medical companies dot the area.

Florida, meanwhile, remains an afterthought in the biotech world. No Florida city has cracked the annual list of top 10 biopharma clusters compiled by Genetic Engineering and Biotech News, an industry publication. Traditional powers including San Diego, Los Angeles and the Bay Area dominate the list...

First, does anyone who has experience in the Jupiter area disagree with the article's assessment? Is it too early in the game to make a call?

Second, this story allows me to tee off on a favorite hobbyhorse of mine, which is the quixotic attempt of local governments to get their cities/states into the biotech business. I personally think it's a tremendous money loser; the benefits only accrue to the lucky few scientists who are recruited in early, when there's a lot of government cash to hand out by the attendant politicians (who also benefit when they show up at ribbon cuttings.) The taxpayer is left with the bill. I think it's clear that to do this right, you need:

• More than one world-class clinical research hospital 
• More than one world-class basic research university
• More than one large pharma/biotech/medical device company with a major R&D center in the geographical area
• Lots of available venture capital
• Lots of available experienced scientists
• An amenable business climate

(I'll bet items 1-3 are most important.)

Even the cities that do have these things (I'm looking at you, San Diego, RTP) have not done nearly as well in the last 20 years as San Francisco and Boston/Cambridge. 

It's a mug's game and I think that Florida is only one example. 

My problems with the EUCheMS survey of European chemists and chemical engineers

Looks like people are being paid all right in Switzerland?
From Salzer et al. Chem. Eur. J. 2015, 21, 9921.

I am busy today, but I wanted to make note of my befuddlement with the pan-European employment survey published in Chemistry: A European Journal in June. I have been meaning to write on it for a while, but finally untracked myself this morning on Reddit. There are some very interesting tidbits in the survey, including the suggestion that the unemployment of the respondents was 3%. I'm skeptical of that number, but I am far more skeptical of our ability to learn anything from this survey, because of the difficulty of getting good data out of such a disparate population of chemists.

Here's how EUCheMS (a pan-European professional society of chemists, it seems) talked about the structure of the survey:

...A total of 4440 chemists and chemical engineers responded to the first issue of the European Employment Survey. This report does not differentiate between chemists and chemical engineers, and their responses have been evaluated jointly... 

...For convenience, in this Editorial this joint group of chemists and chemical engineers will simply be referred to as “chemists”. A rigid procedure was developed and applied to purge the responses of irregular answers. 3830 responses remained after this process and these were evaluated further. Particular emphasis was placed on the employment situation of chemists who graduated within the last 15 years, and 2445 responses came from chemists fitting this criterion. All responses were stored in anonymous form... 

...The questionnaire had six general sections (Personal Education / Employment / Job Training / Salary), which provided fields for free text responses. Industry employees were asked special questions in an additional section. The participation of industry employees accounted for 47 % of the responses. This group covered manufacturing industry,non-manufacturing industry, self-employed chemists, and publishing houses.The age of the responders exhibits a distinct maximum around 30 years of age (Figure 1)....  

...The results of a cross evaluation might be dominated by the large share of responders from Italy (my note: ~1000 respondents) and the UK (my note: ~750 respondents) (cf. Figure 2) and several conclusions could be heavily biased. Accordingly, this called for an evaluation of individual countries together with the joint evaluation of all European responses.... 

...EuCheMS currently has approximately 160000 individual members organized in 42 national member societies and supporting member groups. Those societies who agreed to participate in the survey account for approximately 90% of EuCheMS membership.

My issues:

• It seems goofy to report the salaries of chemists and chemical engineers together (it would be in the US, anyway, dunno about Europe.) 
• We have no idea how well this survey reflects the actual makeup of European chemists. 
• We have no idea how well this survey reflects the makeup of European chemical societies. 
• There was no attempt to understand who did not answer the survey. What was the response rate?
• There was no description of the survey instrument. (Was it online or on paper?) 
• There was no explanation of responses removed from the survey or why, just that it was "rigid." 
• We know that they focused on people who graduated in the last 15 years, but that they have a respondent who is 87 years old (did they throw that person out?).

While I think the survey is interesting, I don't think anyone should draw any conclusions from it. Readers, your thoughts? 

Governor makes reference to grandiose plans, CJ chuckles

From this week's ACS Industry Insights newsletter, a link to a Xconomy post about the loss of continued Washington state R&D funding for its life science ambitions:

The defunding of the Life Sciences Discovery Fund (LSDF) combined with the failure to renew a long-standing research and development tax credit was a disappointment—and, some say privately, a shock—to the state’s biotech industry, particularly at a time when others in the Northwest, including Montana and Oregon, are committing state funds to life sciences research.... 

...Some $11 million in funding for the LSDF was siphoned to the state general fund as part of the $38.2 billion, two-year state operating budget signed late Tuesday by Inslee (pictured above at a WBBA event in 2014), narrowly averting a government shutdown. Lawmakers enacted historic tuition cuts at public universities and channeled hundreds of millions of dollars to teachers and schools in an attempt to fulfill the state constitution’s mandate to adequately fund education....

 And there was this concluding statement in the article:

...Inslee’s spokeswoman added, “While the Legislature did not produce a budget that includes LSDF or R&D incentives, Governor Inslee remains committed to our state’s goal of becoming the global leader in life science innovation and health delivery and will continue to work hard to realize this vision for our state.”

Does anyone buy this stuff? What would it take for Washington (i.e. Seattle) to become a "global leader in life science innovation"? A 11.5 earthquake in the Bay Area that forces Stanford, UC-Berkeley and UCSF to relocate to Seattle? 20X the current rather substantial federal life sciences R&D funding that Washington gets?

(I should note here that Washington is not the only state to have these ambitions...) 

A little bit of doubt would be in order here, I feel

I tend to buy into the neonicotinoid hypothesis for problems with bee populations within the United States. That's the focus of this recent long article in New York magazine as well. There was a long complaint at the end of the article focused on the stovepiped regulations of human-pesticide interactions, something that I have some sympathy for*. But then there was this passage, where the article's main protagonist, a bee farmer, goes a bit off the rails: 

He pauses. “My wife … did I tell you about the insect-bite deal?” He hadn’t. “About four years ago, about this time, she gets a bite. She doctored it, and it seemed to get a little better, but probably a couple of weeks later it just starts going bananas. I said, ‘We must have a dead mouse or something.’ She goes, ‘No, it’s my leg.’ Yellow crap was just oozing out through her skin. She goes to the doctor, and the doctor sends her to a dermatologist at Geisinger Medical Center, which is the Mayo Clinic of the East. 

The dermatologist there said, ‘My boss, the chief dermatologist, would like to visit you.’ He said, ‘First of all, well, you know you had an insect bite, probably a mosquito bite.’ He said you got an infection and something got in there. Then he said, ‘Do you play golf?’ No. ‘Do you have your lawn treated?’ No. ‘Do your grandchildren play sports?’ Yep. ‘Do you walk on the field?’ Oh, yeah. ‘That’s probably pesticide poisoning that caused that.’ ” 

Hackenberg takes a breath. “She almost lost her leg. That’s how bad it was.” He trails off. 

I am sure there are pesticides that can cause tissue damage with sufficient exposure, but something tells me that you need a lot of pesticide exposure to make that happen.

(What's the mechanism for it, anyway? That the mosquito was full of pesticide, and then it bit her leg and then it transferred to her leg and that's what caused it?)

*Regulations of anything within the United States tends to be a weird hodgepodge of city, county, state and federal laws. No one seems to know anything, and no government official tends to go out of their way to make sure that general citizens, businesses or anyone can have a full and complete understanding of what's legal and what's not. Heck of a way to run a railroad. 

Pope Francis Does Not Have a Master's Degree in Chemistry

Last night on Twitter, a classic conversation was started again: "Who is the most famous living chemist?" Very quickly, it was determined that both Pope Francis and Chancellor Angela Merkel should be considered for the "most famous person to have a chemistry degree" position.

This brought Forbes editor Alex Knapp into the conversation when he said that Pope Francis has a master's degree in chemistry. There was a discussion of the variety of news sources, including a pre-papacy Catholic News Service story from 2005 that likely originated the claim:

• that as a young man, Jorge Bergoglio earned a master's degree in chemistry
• from the University of Buenos Aires 

I remember being skeptical of this claim in 2013, but yesterday's conversation had me looking up Pope Francis' current Vatican biography, where the claim is not present (it does note what everyone agrees about - that he has a diploma in chemical technology.) Interestingly, there's a blog about the Shroud of Turin (there's a blog about everything!) with a 2013 post where the author and commenters roundly debate the likelihood that Pope Francis has a M.S. in chemistry. The post also contains quotes from the Pope's Wikipedia talk page showing others with skepticism about these claims. 

I also found it notable that searching through the University of Buenos Aires' English and Spanish language websites is not fruitful. Nor does UBA's English language Wikipedia page list him as a famous alumnus. 

While Googling, I came across a mostly positive New York Times review of a biography of Pope Francis by journalist Austen Ivereigh. This being 2015, I was able to tweet to Dr. Ivereigh the following question: 

Much US media believes Pope Francis to have a master's degree in chemistry from the University of Buenos Aires - is that accurate?

This was Dr. Ivereigh's response (1, 2, 3): 

no  

[H]e completed what would be a kind of diploma in food chemistry, a technical qualification but not a degree. 

and certainly not a Masters.

Between the opinion of a biographer of Pope Francis, that his Vatican biography does not list that degree and that the claimed university does not seem to claim him as an alumnus, it is clear that Pope Francis does not have a master's degree in chemistry from the University of Buenos Aires.

The most incorrect article you will read this week on undergraduate chemical education

From the comments, a shockingly wrong article in the Wall Street Journal: 

Chemistry Departments Try to Attract More Students by Retooling the Major 

Universities begin to overhaul traditional curricula in science field that some worry is churning out too few graduates for nation’s needs 

Forget economics. Chemistry might be the real dismal science. 

Undergraduate programs have been characterized for decades by rigid, yearlong sequences of organic, physical and biochemistry classes that emphasized rote memorization and taught about reactions in isolation. They left little room to pursue side passions—and attracted worrisomely few students, policy makers say. 

As business and biology majors get a reboot, chemistry professors find themselves waging a fierce battle to appeal to undergraduates who might want a scientific grounding to pursue careers in forensics, molecular gastronomy or politics, but who are turned off by the degree’s onerous demands...

I think it's rather interesting to note that the number of chemistry graduates is actually up, according to the NSF's most recent data, from 10,388 in 2000 to 12,888 in 2011.* **

The article goes on to suggest that goes on to suggest that the American Chemical Society is an industry group (it's not - it's a non-profit professional society), that medicinal chemistry is useful to attending medical school (nope, not really), and that Emory University didn't tell its students what "bonds" do until their sophomore year. It suggests that chemotherapy and nuclear chemistry are related (uh, sort of, not really?) and that the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University are teaching their students something called "three-step synthesis." What the heck is that?

A couple of other random questions: who interviews for Ph.D. admissions to organic chemistry programs these days? There can't be very many schools that have instituted this. Who are the policy makers who believe that there are a shortage of chemistry majors? I want to know this, so I can egg their homes tell them they're wrong. Which one of you has been through rote memorization for physical chemistry? That's a really dumb approach, so dumb that I doubt anyone actually does it.

Finally, I would really, really, really like to know this: who is responsible for this mess of an article? There are many good articles to be had about innovative approaches to chemical education - this is not one of them.

*link to NSF SEI Excel spreadsheet here.
** Also, holding fire on the headline and subhed, because reporter may not be responsible for them.

It's hard to write economic news headlines

The latest from the Chemical Activity Barometer, a measurement of chemical commerce activity in the American economy from the American Chemistry Council. Seems to me that this suggests that the economy is slowing a tiny bit, but the headline is about "a spring thaw." I don't get it, unless the suggestion is that March's numbers are better than January and February -- which don't really seem to be the case. I dunno.