"Everyone knows someone"

During a NPR story about Congress sending TSCA reform to the White House, a statement by an Environmental Defense Fund scientist, Richard Denison, is probably tendentious:

And I think that's because these issues touch everyone because they deal with our health. Everyone knows someone who got cancer at an early age or who wasn't able to conceive a child. And chemical exposures are increasingly linked to those problems, so I think what everybody felt it was time to upgrade this law.

In an irritable moment, I'll usually make an unfair generalization that 'the environmentalist is the natural enemy of the chemist.'* To suggest that childhood cancers and modern infertility issues are caused by "increasingly linked to" chemical exposure in the environment is a statement that 1) I suspect doesn't have much causal backing in the literature and 2) a strong accusation that will stick in the hearts and minds of the public. As long as folks like Dr. Denison keep making these statements, I'll keep thinking I'm mostly right.

[I would really like to know how Dr. Denison got invited onto NPR in the role of someone who was more or less an explanatory expert, as opposed to a subject matter expert who practices advocacy. If I ever go on a media program to talk about the STEM shortage myth, I will make my priors known immediately. ("Chemjobber is an industrial chemist, a blogger, and a skeptic of the position that America needs more scientists and engineers.") (I guess that announcing that he works for the Environmental Defense Fund is good enough for NPR.)]

*Update: I should probably narrow that to "synthetic** chemist."
**Defined broadly, as in "those who make new molecules/formulations"

A sign that Joe Nocera doesn't know what he doesn't know

That he's willing to take this statement at face value in his column today on Pfizer and AstraZeneca (h/t VI):

For instance, scientists can use biomarkers to target disease population subsets. “Even in oncology, we are getting at such a better understanding, it is almost like a lock in a key,” said Mark Schoenebaum, the head of health care research for International Strategy and Investment. 

Almost!

(As for his question of whether Big Pharma cutbacks have slowed "innovation" (whatever-the-holy-effing-eff-that-means), my answer is probably "Yes, unquestionably." Every time you fire a team of scientists, you lower the probably of discovering something new from 0.005% (or whatever) to zero.)

(Hey, biotechtoreador, I'm catching on.) 

Burying the lede?

Last week's article by Rudy Baum entitled "Unemployment Data Worst In 40 Years" has been renamed for the print edition as "Chemists for Hire".

As a service, I present 5 headlines that would have been better than "Chemists for Hire":

• "Holy $#$#$#, We're *&*&*ed"
• "Why Did I Get This Degree?"
• "Practice Saying 'Was that a Half-Caff or a Triple-Shot Mocha?'"
• "Hey! Look Over There!"
• "Unemployment Data Worst In 40 Years"

Joe Palca comments on reporting on the palladium Nobel Prize

I commented a number of times (and so have others!) on the good job that NPR's Joe Palca did with tough live on-air conversations on last Wednesday's Nobel Prize in Chemistry. I submitted some questions through NPR's website and Mr. Palca graciously answered the questions on the record. (I'll note that I have edited the questions to make them make a little more sense. Edits are made with [brackets])

CJ: How much lead time did [you] have for the Morning Edition conversation with Steve Inskeep?

Joe Palca: I was able to download the Nobel press material at approximately 5:50 a.m. ET. I had arranged to speak with Joe Francisco at 6:15. I had to write an Intro and questions for Steve Inskeep by 6:30. We did our chat live at 6:40.

CJ: Did [you] listen to the press conference?

JP: No. I listened to the Negishi/Purdue press conference…but I can tell you that there was not a single question about the science.

CJ: When [you] did the live feeds with Craig Windham, how many hours had [you] known about the story? (Note: NPR's top of the hour news updates often feature a live conversation between the anchor and a reporter.)

JP: I only did one live chat with Windham. That was at 7. I finished with Steve at 6:45, so I had a few more minutes to review the press materials. The other newscast piece you heard from me was prerecorded around 7:15.

CJ: Who did [you] consult with to understand palladium catalysis?

JP: Joe Francisco. But truthfully, as someone who enjoyed organic chemistry in college, I felt confident that I could explain a palladium catalyzed reaction that “makes new molecules” without too much difficulty…I would have needed more advice if I had wanted to get into the specifics of the reactions.

CJ: What could the chemistry community do to help reporters like [you] do a good job?

JP: The American Chemical Society has now joined the American Physical Society in being proactive in providing experts…it is extremely useful.
 
(CJ here again.) I'll stick to my previous analogy: the science Nobel Prizes must be the science reporter's equivalent of Iron Chef. Palca had about 50 to 60 minutes to prepare for two live conversations on palladium catalysis. It took me about an hour to write up my thoughts on the palladium Nobel; organic chemistry is my daily life, and I'm not sure I did much better. It's also good to know that ACS is willing to help on chemistry's (hopefully!) one big day each year.
 
Thanks again to NPR's Joe Palca for his willingness to comment about his reporting process.

Who started the 'matchmaker' palladium meme?

Sharon of Icanhasscience (check it out!) notes in the comments that the AP's other report on the palladium Nobel prize used the analogy of a singles bar for palladium-catalyzed cross-couplings. That article is one of the few in the media that didn't seem to use the "matchmaker" meme to describe the reaction.

I'm terribly curious -- who was the first reporter or news outlet to use this analogy? I've never heard metal cross-couplings described this way; I have to admit it's a fairly accurate picture to describe the reaction mechanism. With the help of Google, I see that on October 6, USA Today, Scientific American, New Scientist, Agence France-Presse, NIKKEI.com, Christian Science Monitor, Science Now and MSNBC.com all used the "matchmaker" meme. Is it the quoted Jeremy Berg? Inquiring minds wish to know.

P.S. Has any other chemist heard Pd reactions described this way? Am I the only crazy one who hasn't?

How did the national media do on the palladium Nobel?

It's been not quite a week since Suzuki, Heck and Negishi were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry. It's worth looking at the way that some media outlets covered the prize. For starters, here's the core science paragraph from the AP's story on the award:

The methods have been used to artificially produce cancer-killing substances first found in marine sponges, the academy said in its citation. While clinical testing has started, it's not yet clear whether they will turn out to be useful drugs.It's also being used to create new antibiotics that work on resistant bacteria and a number of commercially available drugs, including the anti-inflammatory Naproxen, prize committee member Claes Gustafsson said. "There have been calculations that no less than 25% of all chemical reactions in the pharmaceutical industry are actually based on these methods," Gustafsson said.

Palladium-catalyzed cross coupling has also been used by the electronics industry to make light-emitting diodes used in the production of extremely thin monitors, the academy said. The approach developed by the winners is widely used in the pharmaceutical industry, in research labs and in commercial production of substances like plastics, said Joseph Francisco, president of the American Chemical Society and a colleague of Negishi's in Purdue's chemistry department.

"It's truly quite fundamental work," he said. By using the metal palladium as a catalyst to make carbon atoms bond to each other, the approach makes those bonds happen "very easily, very cleanly," he said. It requires fewer steps than previous methods and avoids having to clean up unwanted byproducts, he said.

Not a bad effort, really. It's all there: the ubiquity of Pd-catalyzed reactions, the different materials that can be made, the contributions to fundamental knowledge made by the professors and the improvements to reactions from a basic chemistry perspective. Joe Francisco is kind of a nice touch, too, in that he's both president of ACS and also Negishi's colleague at Purdue (do you think they have coffee on a regular basis? Yeah, I doubt it, too.)

The New York Times did the AP one better by getting a quote from Stephen Buchwald, who must be one of the leading practioners of palladium chemistry today. However, they fumbled the ball with the headline ("3 Share Nobel for Work on Synthesizing Molecules" -- nnnnope!) and they get an A for effort with the following "why Pd chemistry is better, historically" paragraph:

Drugs, plastics and many other industrial chemicals consist of large carbon-based molecules. However, getting one carbon atom to bind to another is often not an easy task. Nearly a century ago, a French chemist named Victor Grignard found that coupling a magnesium atom to a carbon atom pushed additional electrons to the carbon atom, making it easier to bond with another carbon atom. That method worked, but not always perfectly, sometimes producing too many unwanted byproducts.

Hurray for getting ol' Victor a mention, boo for making the latte-sippers in Manhattan think that organic chemists hadn't developed new methods of C-C bond formation between Grignard and Heck.

The trophy for bestest, fastest comprehension has to go to NPR's Joe Palca, who suffered through two live reads in the 7 AM and 8 AM hour (EDT) with NPR's anchor Craig Windham during their news updates, then had to go and have a conversation with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep about palladium chemistry. (The comments there (scroll down) are pretty funny -- people are angry with Inskeep for being pretty jokey.) Major, major kudos to Palca for getting a lot right during that Morning Edition conversation:

PALCA: And first of all - so palladium is a catalyst in this particular case. What that means is, it doesn't actually go into the reaction. It doesn't come out at the end of it. But it speeds up the reaction. It makes the reaction do something that might not happen on its own. That's what catalysts are. And palladium happens to be an important catalyst...

...You know, nature has figured out a lot of really remarkable reactions. And the trick, as you say, is to put them into some kind of format where you can use them in a commercial process and make enough of it to use.

INSKEEP: And three chemists working independently have come up with this process and they win the Nobel Prize for chemistry.

Palca needs to be commended for getting a near-textbook definition of a catalyst into a normal conversation on the radio. Unfortunately, there's also the impression that palladium chemistry is something that happens in nature -- oops. Later, he also had to file a story with All Things Considered, where palladium plays the role of yenta:

PALCA: Basically, these three chemists used the metal palladium as a catalyst. Catalysts are a little like matchmakers: They bring atoms together that probably wouldn't get together on their own.

Mr. FRANCISCO: That actually makes it very easy to make new bonds and connect atoms and connect various groups to make new compounds.  

Palca was suffering through the reporter's version of Iron Chef -- today's secret ingredient is Palladium Cross-Coupling! And he has to attempt to translate it into English -- a tough job, even for an organic chemist.

All in all, a pretty good job by the dreaded mainstream media. Good luck next year, guys.