Comments on: Bringing Sexy Back (to Chemistry)

By: Steven Chu Turns On The Charm at C&ENtral Science

Steven Chu Turns On The Charm at C&ENtral Science — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:50:18 +0000

[...] of humor. The interview seems to be generally well-received in the blogosphere. It might not be as sexy as Intel’s commercials, but it’s a start to overcoming stereotypes. Maybe we’ll see Chu on Twitter [...]

By: Carmen Drahl

Carmen Drahl — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:21:17 +0000

@ Edine - maybe not old enough to remember, but not too old to write a blog post about it. I don't know that real science literacy can come from the occasional fun demonstration or experiment in class, though. It needs to start with a fundamental understanding of concepts like probability, uncertainty, etc.

By: Edine Heinig

Edine Heinig — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:19:11 +0000

Obviously, no one who has posted is old enough to remember the “better living through chemistry” from DuPont.

I also take exception the the rantlet about environmentalists. They’re not the enemy, they’re the conscience. There is an element of truth in the following quote:

“I have heard intelligent people speak of the carnage done by chemistry. It seems the fourth scourge of mankind, which harms and destroys men peicemeal, but continually, while war, plague, and famine destroy them wholesale but at intervals.: -Baron Montesquiei

If everyone of us took 4 hours this year and went into a classroom (pre 3rd grade where they start beating the scientist out of us) to do some neat experiment and show kids how chemistry comes into their lives, in a generation there would be at least more chemistry literate people if not more chemists.

Sexy is as sexy does.

By: Chemistry Blog » Blog Archive » Cake From Lab Chemicals

Chemistry Blog » Blog Archive » Cake From Lab Chemicals — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:22:57 +0000

[...] us chemists don’t have a chemistry rock star, Youtube has made Martyn Poliakoff as close as we’ll get. Unless someone is bold enough to go [...]

By: Joseph Peabody

Joseph Peabody — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:09:32 +0000

Speaking as an enthusiastic chemist, whose ambitions to work in research have been on hold:
(a) most of the chemistry jobs are in the developing world (China, India)
(b) without US scientists bringing in reasonable salaries and having a half-way secure job and
(c) in the absence of such scientists – especially chemists – being in the position to show on a daily basis the neat things that they do
(d) it is no surprise that the only impression left of chemists in the popular eye is a negative one.

Bring back the chemistry JOBS to the US, and the POPULARITY will follow.

TV specials about the elite at harvards, berkeleys and mits don’t impress the common person because the people featured are not role models.

By: Chemjobber

Chemjobber — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:46:25 +0000

“Leave the gun. Take the protons.”

By: Maureen

Maureen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:35:10 +0000

Brad, I suggest that the synthesis be for a compound that would cure cancer, diabetes, depression, you name it, but could also, through slight modification, be a chemical warfare agent. And chemists in three continents are racing to be the first to make this wonder molecule in quantities enough to do good or damage. And make elucidation of the catalytic mechanism the key to success. If we can find a way to make reaction mechanisms riveting . . .

By: Brad H

Brad H — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:39:02 +0000

Picture This:
A big budget Hollywood movie staring Shia LaBeouf as a graduate student working out the optimal conditions for an asymmetric epoxidation step in a natural product synthesis. All the while his boss (George Clooney) is all over his back demanding results for the NIH grant proposal he hasn’t started, but is due in 3 days. It has it all, sex, suspense, and synthesis.

By: Kenneth Moore

Kenneth Moore — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:16:57 +0000

Chemistry already is sexy–at least in Canada. According to the Minister of Natural Resources.

My Yahoo account still thinks I live in Canada, so when I log in, it gives me “local” news links. The rest of the story I linked to up there is all about some “accidentally” recorded conversation, yadda yadda yadda… But Minister Raitt calls the medical diagnostic isotope shortage a sexy issue.

Isotopes = chemistry.

Chemistry = sexy!

By: Ivan Amato

Ivan Amato — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:41:16 +0000

As I see it, chemistry gets the Rodney Dangerfield “We don’t get no respect” Award because, for the general population, it is a means to an end. For most narratives about medicine, technology or anything that has molecules and chemistry as the foundation (which is, like, just about everything), the chemistry is the backstory. Hard to hear, but it is the case. Pretty much only for the chemists doing the chemistry and for people happy to read a magazine like C&EN is chemistry itself a welcome driver of a story. To bring the chemistry backstory to the foreground in a way that will draw in a wide audience, narratives have to focus on what it is about chemists that motivates them to dive into the exquisite yet consequential minutae that so often is what characterizes chemistry research and discovery. Passion always makes for a good story, so chemists willing to share that passion with, say, reporters, will be more successful at getting their stories out. And a hugely charismatic Sagan-like popularizer so smitten with the Periodic Table’s mix-and-match atomic pantry–and its unsung role as the physical origin of everything that ever was, is or will be–would surely help the cause of telling the big story of chemistry. But even were such a spokesperson to emerge, the seismic changes now unfolding in the publishing, commmunications and entertainment arenas greatly complicate the distribution of the message.