"Chemical Angel Network" funds startups

This is a pretty cool thing to hear about. By Marc Reisch, from the pages of this week's C&EN:

The Angel Resource Institute, a nonprofit information clearinghouse for early-stage investing, lists 329 angel investor groups in North America. But only one, the Chemical Angel Network, specializes in providing seed capital for chemistry-related start-up companies. 

Founded just five months ago, CAN is a group of high-net-worth individuals with a background in chemistry. They have linked up through CAN to gather intelligence and share insights on potential investments, explains Mark Vreeke, one of the network’s founders... 

White, an inventor with a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Texas Christian University, says chemists are uniquely positioned to understand both the science of a chemistry-related start-up and the financial challenges it faces. 

Unlike software and information technology firms that don’t require a lot of infrastructure, chemical start-ups need lab space, vented hoods, scientific instrumentation, and ways to handle hazardous chemicals, White points out. Chemical start-ups also need more time to do experiments and refine their products than do software-related businesses. 

CAN hopes to offer early-stage chemistry-related firms a lot more than just money. “We’ll be able to offer help on the technical and business side,” Vreeke says, “and we’ll be able to provide connections to the rest of the chemical industry.”

It will be interesting to track whether or not this will actually launch successful companies -- I certainly hope so.

Are you trying to insult me?

From Chemical Week, I think (or was it Chemical Processing?)

I'll try not to take your tagline personally.

The delicate balance of a weekly lab meeting

Dan Buckland, an engineer undergoing medical school training, has an interesting look at how physicians, scientists and engineers look at failure . Naturally, the "scientist" section looks familiar:

The Scientist: Most scientific groups have some variation of the “Weekly Lab Meeting.” In these small group sessions, a group member will often present some in-progress project or recent data. Confusing results and unexpected data are presented, with the hope that the group can provide technical support or advice for future experiments. If the results are unexpected, it is common to question if the experiments were performed properly and if all the appropriate controls were conducted in order to establish the validity of the tests. Here, the questions do not assume the competence of the presenter without data to support that the techniques were properly executed. This is one form of “peer-review” and is the basis for the quality control that goes on in science. In fact, the Royal Society’s (The UK’s Academy of Sciences) motto is “Nullius in verba,” which is roughly “Don’t take anyone’s word for it”, including your closest colleagues. These meetings can become very heated, but usually what stops someone from being too cruel is that they know they have to stand in front of the same group at some point in the future and present their own data. However, if you ask most academic scientists, they can usually tell you a story of a lab meeting where someone went too far and a grad student or post-doc was found crying in a cubicle later.

In graduate school, there are a lot of different reasons to have "the weekly lab meeting." Group meeting is a great time to deal with housekeeping issues, to give group announcements and yes, to report on one's progress in the laboratory. Done right, it's a fantastic seminar course with one's graduate advisor -- if you're cooped up in a small room 2 hours once a week, you can't help but learn something from them. Group meetings are also some of the best places to learn scientific skepticism about both your results and others'.

I note Mr. Buckland's last comments about "what stops someone from being too cruel" is much too ideal. Sometimes, personal dynamics of research groups often allows one group member to challenge results without receiving much doubt in return. I think it is incumbent on the research adviser (or the meeting chair) to make sure that everyone's data and conclusions get the same level of healthy skepticism.

Live in the RTP area? Want to see the old Burroughs-Wellcome site?

Looks like the now-GSK, then-Burroughs Wellcome building (what an odd shaped building!) is open for tours tomorrow only. (Looks like 10 bucks) Sounds interesting -- other people's old labs are always more interesting than your own.

I wonder what drugs were discovered in the building? 

Daily Pump Trap: 10/18/12 edition

Good morning! Between October 16 and October 17, there were 42 new positions posted on the ACS Careers database. Of these, 14 (33%) were academically connected and 25 (60%) were from Kelly Scientific.

Glum: I like days when I can report on a lot of new positions posted -- today is not one of those days.

Orange, TX: Invista (part of Koch Industries) would like to hire a GC technician with 2+ years of laboratory experience.

Is Amgen hiring chemists? Yes: A trip to Amgen's careers website indicates that they're hiring (one or two?) experienced medicinal chemists at their South San Francisco and Cambridge sties. (posting date October 5.) This is the first time that I've done company-specific searching where they've actually been hiring. (Hey! Didn't they just lay off a bunch of medicinal chemists late last year? Huge sigh.)

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show 252, 706, 2660 and 10 positions for the search term "chemist." 

When are opportunity cost arguments most applicable?

Yesterday, a great many chemistry bloggers answered Mr. David Bernstein's question (posed on the Washington Post's education blog) "Why are you forcing my son to take chemistry?" I cannot really add anything to their righteous responses, so I'll send you over to Ash's, Derek's, SAO's and Janet's.

[Won't someone speak up for the joys of memorization? Very first, I assume that Mr. Bernstein is deeply mistaken about general chemistry being all memorization. Second, does anyone actually teach chemistry by memorization? Third, I've always felt that remembering something was the byproduct of actual understanding of the concept. People don't like memorizing things that are "useless" -- like the ordered list of American presidents, their parties, dates of office that I was asked to memorize as a student of AP US History (a special demand of our excellent teacher -- hello, Dr. P!) But it's only a memorized list if... you don't understand the ebb and flow of American politics. Do you memorize the alphabet, or do you understand it? Hard to say. Did I memorize Jeff Saturday's jersey number? (63, btw) Not really.]

I felt the biggest pang of potential regret when I read Mr. Bernstein's final argument:

There’s a concept in economics called “opportunity costs,” which you may not have learned about because you were taking chemistry instead of economics. Opportunity costs are the sacrifices we make when we choose one alternative over another. A family store may be turning a good profit by selling tomatoes, but it would turn a bigger profit if it used the same shelf space to sell cucumbers. There are opportunity costs of selling tomatoes. 

When you force my son to take chemistry (and several other subjects, this is not only about chemistry), you are not allowing him that same time to take a public speaking course, which he could be really good at, or music, or political science, or creative writing, or HTML coding for websites. 

Maybe he will learn something in chemistry somewhere along the way. But he will lose out on so many other more important opportunities, and so will our society, which will have deprived itself of his full contribution.

As someone who routinely uses "opportunity cost" arguments against the "STEM graduate school is good for you" meme, I am concerned that perhaps Mr. Bernstein's argument sounds a little too familiar.

But the opportunity costs of one year of high school chemistry seem relatively low. While Mr. Bernstein seems to have stipulated that it's not just about chemistry, I don't understand how it is chemistry that HAS to be the marginal class that has disallowed his son to not take a course in creative writing or HTML coding. At the same time, the relative opportunity costs of taking a Ph.D. in the sciences seem potentially very high. While we can debate the amount of time Mr. Bernstein's son might spend taking chemistry, we can all agree that a rigorous science graduate program will consume all of one's attention for at least 4 to 5 years. That you could be doing something else during that time seems apparent.

I also think there is also a distinct difference between the life of a high school student (15-18 years old) and a potential graduate student (somewhere between 22 and 28). When you're a high school student, it seems like there are very few options that you should look at and deny yourself. (Perhaps professional athlete or professional entertainer?) When you're in your late 20s, I think you should be thinking very seriously about how you will be making a living, and what your chances of success might be. Denying yourself options in high school seems a little unwise; by going to graduate school in the sciences and pursuing a doctoral degree (and beyond!), I feel that by pursuing one path (academic/industrial science), you are continually choosing not to walk other paths or raise the cost of pursuing them later.

Process Wednesday: the headaches of low yields

From the august pages of Organic Process Research and Development, a team from Boehringer Ingelheim talks about yield in a review titled "The Eight Criteria Defining a Good Chemical Manufacturing Process" [1](doesn't leave much room for debate, does it?):

Criterion 3: Yield. The ideal or theoretical yield of a chemical reaction would be 100%. According to Vogel, yields around 100% are called quantitative; yields about 90% are excellent; 80%, very good; 70%, good; 50%, fair; and yields below about 40% are considered poor. Purification steps such as distillation or recrystallization always lower the yield, and the reported yield usually refers to the yield of the final purified product... 

[snip] The objective of the development chemist is to reach yields of 80% or above. Yields in the range of 70% and below are often considered unfavorable in the pharmaceutical business. The lower the yield, the larger are the number and relative amounts of side products, which can carry over to subsequent steps and potentially remain undetected. Since questions can be raised about the destiny of the unaccounted materials during regulatory inspections, particular considerations are given to the monitoring and fate of genotoxic impurities, and avoidance of genotoxic impurities has become an increasingly important synthetic design consideration. Finally, for low-yielding steps, the cleaning operations can become complex and more involved.

To this novice process chemist, the reminder of the further problems with low yields (undetected side products, problems with cleanouts) are important. And now you have it -- when someone says "and this oxidation was carried out with an excellent yield of 83%...", you can remind them that, ahem, Arthur Vogel says that your yield was "very good."*

*Don't do that, it's not nice to be mean.

1. Dach, R.; Song, J.J.; Roschangar, F.; Samstag, W.; Senanayake, C.H. "The Eight Criteria Defining a Good Chemical Manufacturing Process." Org. Process Res. Dev. ASAP. dx.doi.org/10.1021/op300144g

Pumpkin flavoring -- is there any chemistry there?

The taste of fall (Credit: AftonApple.com)

Felix Salmon has an interesting post on the near-ubiquity of pumpkin flavoring in American corporate restaurants this season (emphases mine):

According to a seven-page PowerPoint from the MenuTrends database of the firm Datassential, “This year is on track to be one of the most active years for seasonal pumpkin menuing” and could top the 2011 record, when more than 60 pumpkin-related dishes appeared on the menus of America’s top 250 chain restaurants. (Datassential really gets into this stuff, further reporting, among other things, that in appetizers, pumpkin is more likely to be roasted than toasted or puréed.) Zero in on beverage menus, and the increase is even more striking: Pumpkin drink offerings have increased 400 percent during the past five years. 

The weird thing about pumpkin’s rise to baconlike ubiquity is that pumpkin, on its own, is not a very appetizing food at all. A dense and stringy fruit, it needs the accompaniment of a lot of sugar and spices before it becomes particularly palatable. As a marketing tool, however, pumpkin is perfectly pitched for today’s eaters. The fact that it needs that extra flavoring? That’s a bonus, not a bug, as far as the restaurant business is concerned. A pumpkin dish, in the era of the locavore, has connotations of virtue—when you think of pumpkin, you think of something farm-grown and wholesome. That helps make it a permissible indulgence, even when what you’re eating is mainly just sugar and spice. Never mind the recipe realities—savor those associations! [snip] 

...The secret of Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte, for instance, is that it’s just a latte spruced up with pumpkin-flavored syrup—connoisseurs cite cinnamon, nutmeg, clove. Dunkin’ Donuts takes the feint further, dropping the “spice” from the name, though that’s mostly what you’re tasting. But no matter: If a restaurant served actual pumpkin purée, the taste and texture might shatter customers’ illusions. “Pumpkin,” on the other hand, is delicious.

It has long been my assumption that there was some sort of advance in flavor chemical manufacturing that allowed for this explosion in pumpkin flavoring. I was mentally picturing rough hard-hatted men in white coveralls, loading pallets of pumpkins into reactors, turning on the steam to the jacket, the oh-so-careful distillation of essence of pumpkin... Now all my dreams are shattered, now that I've learned that it's probably just the spice and the sugar that is so popular.

I know my readership in the flavorings industry is not large -- anyone care to comment whether there is a single molecule of pumpkin flesh in pumpkin flavoring?

Kevin Reed: a person with an interesting job

Some Sangji inside baseball...

In the sordid history of UCLA's PR response to the #SheriSangji case, UCLA vice chancellor of legal affairs Kevin Reed plays a central role. He was the first UCLA official to spread the "Sheri Sangji was an experienced chemist" myth and has acted as a spokesperson for UCLA with respect to the case.

I was amused to be reading a story on ESPN about UCLA basketball's NCAA troubles recently and found this little tidbit: (emphases mine):

The investigation has cast such a cloud over the program that UCLA vice chancellor of legal affairs Kevin Reed monitored UCLA's annual basketball media day Wednesday to make sure Howland and the players did not address any questions about the investigation.  

So with less than a month to go before the season begins with the grand reopening of a refurbished Pauley Pavilion, the Bruins don't know if their two top prospects will be on the floor for the Nov. 9 season opener against Indiana State.  

"I'm just not going to comment with anything having to do with the ongoing investigation," Howland said with Reed lurking close behind. "It's inappropriate and it's not fair to the players. It's just a matter of their confidentiality with respect to the process. We're moving forward and I'm very hopeful and very optimistic that everything is going to work out and just waiting for the process to unfold and take place." 

Every large institution has its guardians of their public image; it is interesting to see how they work.

Hydraulic fracturing wastewater and #chemjobs

Whatever you think of hydraulic fracturing, there's one thing for certain -- there are probably a lot of new jobs in the field. From this week's Chemical and Engineering News article by Melody Baumgardner (emphasis mine):

There’s a lot of water to treat. Hydraulic fracturing requires between 3 million and 5 million gal of water per gas well. The water is combined with fracturing chemicals and a sand or ceramic proppant and then pumped into the horizontal branches of the well. The proppant props open fractures in the shale, allowing gas that has been trapped for eons to flow out. After fracking, roughly 35% of the water returns to the surface as flowback in the first weeks. Additional liquid known as produced water—a mix of fracking fluid and groundwater—comes up with the gas for most of the life of the well. 

Hydraulic fracturing got its start in western states, where oil and gas drillers pump untreated wastewater into nearby wells driven deep into porous rock. For decades, deep-well injection has been the first choice for disposal because of its low cost. But the Marcellus areas of Pennsylvania and West Virginia have a geology that is not suited to deep-well injection. To dispose of the water off-site would require around 40 truck trips every day for weeks or months. That is costly, and energy companies can literally wear out their welcome when using local roads. 

In contrast, the goals of wastewater treatment are to reuse, recycle, or reduce the water that comes out of the well. Chemical firms that specialize in water treatment such as Kemira and Ecolab’s Nalco unit; equipment makers including GE and Siemens; and service providers, both large and small, customize their offerings depending on the water’s contents and where it is destined to go. The main consideration in selecting technologies, all agree, is cost. 

With prices for natural gas at a historic low of less than $3.00 per thousand cu ft, energy firms are compelled to select the cheapest legal alternative. “My biggest competitor is a hole in the ground,” says Mark Wilson, marketing director for unconventional gas at GE Power & Water. “We are looking for more energy efficiency and lower capital costs.”

I think one of the few bright spots in the #chemjobs field has been Nalco, which has been hiring consistently over the last few years. Read the whole thing, especially if you're interested in learning about some of the actual environmental consequences of hydraulic fracturing.

Arrrrrrggggghhh! Letters on Rudy Baum's tenure

I think it's rather humorous and fitting that this week's C&EN has devoted its letters section to readers reflecting on the end of Rudy Baum's tenure. I'd like to think that ol' Rudy enjoyed reading all of those letters.

Best (?) yet, the first letter is all "Rudy, thanks for publishing my letters all these years, but you've been wrong all along!"

Go over there and enjoy, if that's your thing.

P.S. The "Arrrrrgh!" is a reference to this post.

Lesson learned

For the love of all that is holy, do not take the month off of features that you do three times a week.

Ignore the two posts below, and go straight to the podcast. Or not - up to you. 

Ivory Filter Flask: 9/11/12 and 10/9/12 editions

Still more catch-up work (whew!) on the Ivory Filter Flask. Holy cow, there are a lot of academic positions posted.

9/11/12 numbers (between 8/28 and 9/10)
Total number of ads: 35
- Postdocs: 1
- Tenure-track faculty:  33
- Temporary faculty: 0
- Lecturer positions:  0
- Staff positions:  1
- Ratio of US/international positions: 33 / 2

10/9/12 numbers (9/25-10/8):
Total number of ads: 109
- Postdocs: 4
- Tenure-track faculty:  95
- Temporary faculty: 1
- Lecturer positions:  5
- Staff positions:  4
- Ratio of US/international positions: 105 / 4

Daily Pump Trap: 9/11/12, 9/18/12 and 10/2/12 editions

Doing a little catch-up work here, tallying up all the weeks that I missed recently. There is nothing quite like spending 2 hours or so going cross-eyed at academic and Kelly postings.

9/11/12 edition: Between 9/6 and 9/11, 49 jobs total, 23 (48%) academically connected, 26 (52%) from Kelly Scientific Resources.

9/18/12 edition: 9/13-9/17, 71 jobs total, 41 (58%) academically connected, 28 (39%) from Kelly Scientific Resources.

10/2/12 edition: 9/25-10/1, 118 jobs total, 63 (53%) academically connected, 33 (28%) from Kelly Scientific Resources.

September is a crazy, crazy month for academic positions, I tell you what. 

Podcast: "I, for one, Welcome our Biochemical Overlords", Matt Hartings and Chemjobber

So Matt Hartings of ScienceGeist and I got into a fairly heated Twitter debate about the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (awarded to Professors Lefkowitz and Kobilka for their work on GPCRs).

So I invited Matt to give me a call via Skype yesterday so we could discuss our differences, and we recorded the results -- enjoy:



By now, the traditional apologies for sound quality, etc. It's been lightly edited for ums, ahs and my incredibly halting speech. If you want a summary, Matt had better, more substantive arguments in general, and dealt with my counter-arguments easily. He will be using his persuasive powers to round up synthetic chemists to toil in protein crystallography laboratories.

0-4:00: Introduction
4:00: Did Lefkowitz and Kobilka do chemistry?
10:30: CJ's concerns about the trend of biochemical Nobelists
16:30: Whither the chemical enterprise?
24:15: The Dominance of Biochemistry
28:28: Will organic chemists ever win a Nobel Prize ever again?
30:30: Matt's "Ratatouille" analogy
32:00: CJ asks, "How much of bench-level molecular biology is chemistry?"
35:15: Matt gets CJ to cry uncle with the classic #debatefail of "I wasn't arguing that."
40:00: A long digression on the breadth of chemistry as a field
45:10: Matt does an excellent Carl Sagan impression, talking about the "supernova of chemistry."
47:30: Is it time for the Chemistry Diaspora? Matt: No.
49:00: Discussion of impact on chemical education
54:00: The disproportionate media impact of the Nobel
55:00: CJ notes that BLS-projected job growth for biochemists and biophysicists is quite high.
1:03:45: CJ feels a little better
1:05:00 Matt provides a nice summary.

Taking your kids to work... on the weekends

One of the best parts of any of the scientific Nobel Prize is the human stories that arise. I really enjoyed Carmen Drahl's interview of novelist Cheryl Renée Herbsman, the daughter of 2012 chemistry Nobelist Professor Robert Lefkowitz:

CD: Growing up, what kinds of things did you hear from your father about what he worked on? 

CRH: Growing up, I don’t think my siblings and I necessarily understood what our father was researching. We knew it had to do with receptors, but that might have been the full extent of our understanding. Sometimes he would talk at dinner about whether the research was going well or not. Occasionally he would take us to the lab with him on a Saturday morning, where we would have wheeled desk-chair races and explore the walk-in refrigerators. Often, we would hear him dictate papers into his Dictaphone. The words didn’t mean much to us. But I remember my younger sister writing up “scientific papers” of her own with a lot of important-sounding made-up words. My dad always ended the dictation by saying, “RJL etc.” So my sister ended hers with her initials, etc., as well.

Some of the happiest memories I have of my childhood are going to my engineer father's workplace and wandering amongst the blueprints and computer terminals. (Also, the massive cups of super-concentrated hot chocolate that he would make me.)

I look forward to the day when I can take my kids to work with me on the weekend (safely, of course. They don't make steel-toed boots in kids' size, I don't think.)

Go on over there and read it. 

AbbVie CEO and credential issues

I have been remiss in posting recently, so I missed posting about this news about the Abbott pharma spin-off, AbbVie and its new CEO's resume troubles last month. But yesterday's comments about fibbing on one's résumé reminded me. From Crain's Chicago Business last month:

Abbott Laboratories misstated the education credentials of Richard Gonzalez, the executive tapped to head its pharmaceutical spinoff, in at least nine regulatory filings between 2002 and 2007, Crain's has found. 

Mr. Gonzalez did not receive a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from the University of Houston, nor a master's degree in biochemistry from the University of Miami, contrary to claims in Abbott's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission when the longtime company executive was a director. He retired from Abbott as president and chief operating officer in 2007 but returned two years later. 

In October, Mr. Gonzalez was named CEO of AbbVie, which is projected to have $18 billion in annual sales after it is spun off later this year. Without a college degree, he seemingly would be a rarity among CEOs of major corporations.

What to say about this? Abbott claims that it was an error by administrative staff that allowed the error/mistake/lie (?) to become public record. It's beyond the scope of this blog to determine whether the error was intentional or not (I am sure someone has been desperately searching for copies of Mr. Gonzalez's resume from the early 1980s.)

Part of me thinks that this is not a huge deal. Mr. Gonzalez is from a time where it was not uncommon for people to join companies with simply a high school degree and work their way up to the top. (And there's an argument to be made -- what should we do with our educational system that this could be the case in the future? A debate for another time, and probably another blog.) Surely, his position as CEO is based on his performance as a manager and administrator.

But, of course, this can be seen as the very best fruits of credential fabulism. You fib a little to get into the door, and then you work your way to the top on your own merits!

Readers, can you split this baby?

How much of people's resume/CVs are checked?

One of the recurring themes of fabulists is how often they fake their credentials to gain their positions. One of my favorite ones is the 2009 case where a Texas A&M administrator claimed to be a former Navy SEAL. From the Austin Statesman:

Texas A&M's No. 3 administrator presented himself as a warrior-scholar: a former Navy SEAL with a doctorate from Tufts University. But records obtained by The Bryan-College Station Eagle indicate that Alexander Kemos never was part of the elite fighting force, and Texas A&M officials confirmed Friday that he doesn't have a doctorate or even a master's degree, which was a posted requirement for the $300,000-a-year position as the top adviser to Texas A&M President R. Bowen Loftin. Kemos resigned Friday morning, the day after he was confronted by Loftin in Maine, where they were vacationing.

So it comes as no surprise to anyone that Annie Dookhan, the dry-labbing chemist, was caught giving herself a master's degree in chemistry. From Carmen's article in C&EN:

Her résumé lists a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts, Boston*, but she does not hold that credential according to school officials.

Isn't it time that someone came up with a way of checking all the educational credentials that people report in their résumé and CV? If LinkedIn (for example) were to offer a "confirmation" checkmark the way that Twitter does with celebrities, I would think that jobseekers would be forced to verify their credentials (for a nominal fee, of course.) Are there résumé checking services? That'd would be a cheap way to avoid credential fabulists (or at least filter out the dumb ones...)

Readers, ever seen people claim to have things on their CVs that were not true?

(What's to stop someone from inserting their name into articles and padding their publications sections? "The Chemical Development of the Commercial Route to Sildenafil:  A Case History." Dale, D.J.; Dunn, P.J.; Golightly, C.; Chemdued, F.A.K.; Hughes, M.L.; Levett, P.C.; Pearce, A.K.; Searle, P.M.; Ward, G.; Wood, A.S. Org. Proc. Res. Dev., 2000, 4 (1), pp 17–22.) 

*There's a Sean Connery quote from "The Untouchables" that comes to mind.

Daily Pump Trap: 10/11/12 edition

Good morning! Between October 9 and October 10, there were 33 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 9 (27%) are academically connected and 13 (40%) are from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Camden, SC: Invista is looking for a B.S./M.S./Ph.D. laboratory manager for its polymer laboratory. Looks like a lot of analytical work.

Cleveland, OH: Promerus LLC is looking for a M.S./Ph.D. NMR chemist; they're a polymer/packaging company, looks like. 10+ years experience, industrial experience desired.

Chemistry Nobel qualified: SRI International is searching for a Ph.D. protein biochemist for a position in Harrisonburg, VA. Looks like PI-level qualifications desired. Strong mass spectrometry experience wanted.

Philadelphia, PA: CPS, Inc. needs a agriculturally-oriented formulator. B.S./M.S./Ph.D. desired, 5-10 years industrial experience. Rheology, agricultural biotechnology desired. Pay decent-ish: 70k-105k. (Okay, maybe not? Seems low.) 

Why I am discomfited by today's chemistry Nobel

Congratulations to Professor Robert Lefkowitz and Professor Brian Kobilka for the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors." Their biochemical and structural work is groundbreaking and fundamental in nature -- and immediately useful, too. As Derek said, "At least a third of marketed drugs, after all, are GPCR ligands, so their importance is hard to overstate."

There's been a bit of back-and-forth in the chemblogo/Twittersphere about whether or not this is another "biology" prize for the Chemistry Nobel, and whether or not that is a good thing or a bad thing. The most eloquent defenders of the position that it is indeed a good thing include the two most eloquent writers in the chemblogosphere, Derek Lowe and Ash of The Curious Wavefunction. From Derek:

Biology isn't invading chemistry - biology is turning into chemistry. Giving the prize this year to Lefkowitz and Kobilka takes us from the first cloning of a GPCR (biology, biology all the way) to a detailed understanding of their molecular structure (chemistry!) And that's the story of molecular biology for you, right there. As it lives up to its name, its practitioners have had to start thinking of their tools and targets as real, distinct molecules. They have shapes, they have functional groups, they have stereochemistry and localized charges and conformations. They're chemicals. That's what kept occurring to me at the recent chemical biology conference I attended: anyone who's serious about understanding this stuff has to understand it in terms of chemistry, not in terms of "this square interacts with this circle, which has an arrow to this box over here, which cycles to this oval over here with a name in the middle of it. . ." Those old schematics will only take you so far. 

So, my fellow chemists, cheer the hell up already. Vast new territories are opening up to our expertise and our ways of looking at the world, and we're going to be needed to understand what to do next. Too many people are making me think of those who objected to the Louisiana Purchase or the annexation of California, who wondered what we could possibly ever want with those trackless wastelands to the West and how they could ever be part of the country. Looking at molecular biology and sighing "But it's not chemistry. . ." misses the point. I've had to come around to this view myself, but more and more I'm thinking it's the right one.

In Ash's comments on the prize, he comments that he's tired with this ages-old debate:

I have to say that the whole “But is this chemistry?!” meme is getting quite boring. Binding of a small molecule to a GPCR is as much of a molecular interaction as anything in chemistry. Plus, think about the downstream chemistry that GPCRs do, including phosphorylation and salt-bridge breakage. I thought chemists were supposed to rub their hands with glee at the reduction of biology to chemistry while biologists fret and fume. But I see the opposite, biologists being quite sanguine about proteins being awarded medicine Nobels while chemistry continue to complain about proteins (chemicals!) being awarded chemistry Nobels. As I have said before though, this very bickering shows the astonishing reach and diversity of the field. If you can’t even agree on a definition for your field, well, that means your field is truly omnipresent.

There are a number of questions/complaints that have been raised with this trend in the chemistry Nobels -- here are some that I have heard and agree with:

• While chemists may have a more-and-more expansive definition of chemistry, do biologists agree with this redefinition/annexation? What have biologists said about this? 
• If we asked Professors Lefkowitz and Kobilka last week if they were chemists, would they have said yes or no? Is this relevant? 
• This is chemistry's one day to bask in the media spotlight. We have emphasized biological chemistry for the 6 of the last 13 Nobels (h/t SeeArrOh). Is this the right mix? 
• What does this trend tell graduate students in other, non-life-science-oriented chemistry fields?
• If you are using the tools of chemistry to do biology, are you a chemist? If you are not a chemist and yet advance the understanding of chemistry, should you be considered for the chemistry Nobel? (My answer: yes, certainly.) 
• Isn't this just a sign that the Nobels, their strictures and the way they are awarded are a terrible way to highlight scientific merit and achievement? Should judged awards for science look more like the Heisman Trophy or the Westminster Dog Show? 

My main complaint against this trend of biology/biologists winning recent chemistry Nobel prizes is that it is beginning to distract from the non-life-sciences aspects of chemistry. Physical chemists, inorganic chemists, analytical chemists, polymer chemists (and yes, organic chemists too!) are all losing this zero-sum game, and missing out on their opportunity to tell the larger public that they exist and why they're important to humanity. We can always rely on the public to be willing to support (and fund!) disease cures and advances in human biology (and they have their own prize for Physiology or Medicine!), but gaining public acceptance or recognition for these other (more fundamentally chemistry?) fields is much more difficult. I think that's why I wince a little bit when it's yet another life scientist that gets to step up to the mike.