Chemistry Blog

Mark

Author's details

Date registered: April 11, 2012

Biography

Mark Lorch has PhD in biochemist and is a lecture at the University of Hull, UK. As well as research, teaching and blogging he can sometimes be found 'science busking' on the streets of Yorkshire. Sometimes his favourite tricks end up in his blogs. Oh, and he tweets @sci_ents.

Latest posts

  1. The advance of the chemical-free sciences — April 1, 2014
  2. ‘Anonymous’ peer-review – a cautionary tale — March 28, 2014
  3. Which science does the most magic? — February 27, 2014
  4. GUEST POST: The Blogversation Continues: Turning Around Public Perception on Chemicals and Chemistry — February 20, 2014
  5. Wellcome chemical images — January 30, 2014

Most commented posts

  1. ‘Anonymous’ peer-review – a cautionary tale — 15 comments
  2. Helium for balloons but none for my NMR — 15 comments
  3. The Underground Map of the Elements — 14 comments
  4. Space dinosaurs, the saga continues — 14 comments
  5. Bloggers are time wasters — 13 comments

Author's posts listings

Apr 01

The advance of the chemical-free sciences

by |fun, general chemistry, opinion | (14139 Views)

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Chemist have long complained about the use of the term ‘chemical-free’ in marketing, particularly when used to promote organic produce. To bolster our standing, and to sure up the chemical industry, we go one about everything containing chemicals and hence  how ‘chemical-free’ is a meaningless term. The veracity of the anti-chemical-free movement is highlighted by …

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6 comments

Mar 28

‘Anonymous’ peer-review – a cautionary tale

by |opinion, science policy | (17906 Views)

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Some time ago I received a grant proposal to review. Its was from an eminent professor. I was extremely disappointed, on numerous accounts, with the quality of the proposal. In short I thought it relied very heavily on the authors standing in the community and only paid lip service to the science. And so (naively) safe …

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15 comments

Feb 27

Which science does the most magic?

by |fun | (39797 Views)

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A few weeks back  Vittorio had a pop at Sigma-Aldrich for marketing fluorosulfuric acid-antimony pentafluoride as ‘magic acid’.  Which got me wondering, just how common is magic in the sciences? And which disciplines are the most mystical? So I checked. A search for ‘magic’ in titles of articles using Scopus pulls up 8,698 hits. That’s a …

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7 comments

Feb 20

GUEST POST: The Blogversation Continues: Turning Around Public Perception on Chemicals and Chemistry

by |Uncategorized | (48977 Views)

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Guest post by Luke Gammon This is the second post in response to a conversation started by @chemtacular and @reneewebs (see an excellent summary by Reneé Webster of the conversation so far). In October last year, Chemistry World wrote an article on chemophobia which asked “Is it the role of industry, working academic scientists or communicators to do the …

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Jan 30

Wellcome chemical images

by |general chemistry | (49061 Views)

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Francis Crick wall graffiti Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Francis Crick wall graffiti, Location and date unknown 'Keep the Lefties Out. Crick for God' Crick Papers Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc 2.0 UK, see http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/page/Prices.html

The UK’s leading medical research charity, the Wellcome Trust, have donated a treasure trove to the world; 100,000 images covering the history of all aspects of medicine, science and technology are now freely available to any and all. The database contains pictures of weird and wonderful medical instruments, copies of historical documents and stunning examples …

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Jan 28

Yes, there are chemicals in the shampoo!

by |Uncategorized | (47072 Views)

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‘Organic’ cosmetics manufacturers, the very epicentre of chemophobia, right? All those ‘chemical-free’ bottles of deodorants, shampoos and hair dyes.  It makes you want to pull your hair out just so there’s no need for their nonsensical products.  And here’s the latest from Daniel Field Organic and Mineral Hairdressing, tucked away in the FAQs is this gem. Are …

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