A crazy idea: mid-career scientists for federally-granted chemical safety officer positions

It's time for another crazy idea from CJ -- one that combines issues of chemistry unemployment with academic chemical safety.

Among of the many issues with academic chemical safety is that 1) there are typically not very many chemical safety/hygiene officers within departments, so the workload is pretty heavy (especially if you have a large department) and 2) many chemical safety officers (not all, mind you) are relatively inexperienced in terms of chemistry. (Again, a generalization.)

You could imagine a NIH/NSF-run program that:
- hired interested unemployed mid-career scientists (out of school/PD for 10+ years)
- trained them in chemical safety and hygiene issues
- granted them to universities with lots of student/postdoctoral researchers

What's the current ratio of chemical hygiene officers to researchers at R1 universities? 1 to 100? 1 to 200? 1 to 500? (Doubtful.) Raising that ratio to 1 to 50, say, would probably do a least a little good. In addition, their industrial experience would probably give their words a little more weight. Finally, the federal funding would alleviate the universities' concerns about money.

I'm guessing this program could easily absorb about 250 unemployed mid-career scientists. I'm not sure it would be a great job for a mid-career scientist, but it'd be a job.

A crazy idea: a Draft Advisory Board for chemistry

In the middle of the Scott Kern thread (50+ comments and counting!), a discussion about the difference between M.S. and Ph.D. scientists broke out. While I don't wish to relitigate the issue, it touches tangentially on something that I've been wondering for a while: how does a young grad student know 1) if he or she should get a Ph.D. and 2) if (s)he gets a Ph.D., how do they know if they will get a job?

Allow me to go on a tangent for a bit: the NFL draws most of its players from college football. If a college football player enters the draft, that player is no longer eligible to play in college. Faced with such an irreversible decision, the NFL has instituted the Draft Advisory Board, which can advise a college football player if the player will or will not be drafted and where he will go in the draft. While the recommendations of the board can be ignored by the player, the board has apparently proven to be fairly accurate.

Why isn't there a similar board run by ACS? The decision to get a Ph.D. is more or less equally irreversible. You could get somewhat senior people from industry (group-leader level) and having them anonymously review (anonymous?) CVs and research summaries. They would answer one question only: how does the student's credentials compare to that of recently hired employees? You could imagine any number of possible recommendation rubrics, but I'd go with: not likely to be hired / average candidate / above-average candidate.

This is something that you'd think would be good: students can't really rely on their peers for such recommendations. While faculty members are going to be fairly accurate at their guesses, there's conflict-of-interest and privacy issues that might push a student to want a 2nd (or 3rd) opinion. While I'm not entirely convinced* of the "Ph.D. glut" theory, this board might be a way of alleviating that problem, too.

Readers, what do you think? Tell me how wrong I am, please.

*Meaning that I haven't looked at the data and/or given it enough thought to have a real opinion.

A commenter's good idea: extend/adjust ACS dues waivers for unemployed members

An anonymous commenter notes that the ACS bylaws only allow unemployed members to waive their dues for 2 consecutive years. While I suspect that those 2 years might be able to cover most unemployment circumstances for many members, this Great Recession is marked by high numbers of the long-term unemployed (6 months +).

Why not extend ACS unemployment benefits to 3 years?

I can't imagine that this would cost a lot of money (maybe I'm wrong.) Isn't this exactly what you'd want from ACS? I think it's a good idea. What do you think?

Pledge drive: Want to know the TRUE unemployment rate for chemists?

In a recent In the Pipeline thread, commenter Jose said the following:

"Any geeks want to set up a website and do a social marketing campaign to get real data on unemployed/underemployed pharma-biotech chemists? If the ACS cannot get their act together, maybe it's time someone else did??"

If you believe the ACS member survey, the unemployment rate for chemists for 2009 is 3.8%. Do you believe that? I gotta say, I'm skeptical.

Would you like to find out otherwise? I would like to do a web survey on SurveyMonkey.com, where I could invite all chemists (regardless of ACS membership) to tell me their employment/unemployment status.

Problem is, an unlimited survey on SurveyMonkey is $200/year. While I'm willing to support a good portion of the cost, it would be nice to have some help. So, would you be willing to pitch in? Pledge your support in the comments and if I can get pledges for over 40% of the cost of the survey, we'll do this thing. What do you think?