The HigherEd Bubble Part 2: Is It a Bubble?

The views expressed this week are those of this author only.  They are not necessarily the views of the author's employer nor any other author at Chemistry-Blog.com.

An economic bubble is a market with inflated value. Something is overvalued and conventional wisdom says the value of that good will continue to rise. Remember the dot-com boom and crash around 2000? In the late 90s, all you needed was a start-up internet company and you were guaranteed to make it, right? Tech stocks soared. But then the economy began to turn, Microsoft was declared a monopoly, and people realized the guaranteed rate of return wasn’t so great.

Buyers bought an asset they thought would appreciate and make them rich in the future when they sold that asset. The increased demand caused the price to rise, which proved to people the value would indeed rise. What could go wrong? It’s only an asset irrationally and artificially overvalued.

More recently, the US housing market was a bubble which dramatically burst. For an entire generation, it was assumed you could purchase a house as a sound investment in your future. The house would always be worth more when you were ready to sell it than when you purchased it. While this does have a modicum of truth, the ‘truth’ got stretched to unhealthy levels.

Conventional wisdom said you have to take out a mortgage to purchase the house, and that it’s ok to leverage yourself into a larger home than you can really afford. It’ll appreciate and you’ll make your money back. In fact… since you know the house will increase in value, go ahead and take a cash-out re-fi. In fact… make it a balloon payment, adjustable, interest-only loan! You’ll sell or cash-out re-fi again before the mortgage adjusts! As homes did rise in value, all homes become more expensive. And cheap and available credit only encouraged more consumption. Then the bubble burst, home values plummeted, and the market crashed, as we are all only too painfully aware.

So what does this have to do with higher education?

Read more »

Subscribe to the comments for this post

The HigherEd Bubble Part 1: The State of Higher Education

Bubble. The dot-com bubble. The housing bubble. The gold bubble. We’ve probably heard various markets called ‘bubbles’ by TV newscasters over the past few years. If you watch 24-hour cable news, you’ve probably heard someone talking about one bubble or another every half hour. Do we really know what that means? And is higher education the next bubble about to burst?

via Flickr user Mysserli

I’ll be tackling that question this week in a series of posts. I by no means consider myself an economics expert. I’m just an un-tenured college professor in my sophomore season looking at the wall to see if there’s any writing…  This may seem like an odd series for a chemistry blog, and you're probably right.  But not only am I a chemist, I'm also a college educator.  And many of you are, too.  Or you went to grad school with someone who's in higher education now.  Or you're still in school.  Or your kids will be going to college soon, or are already there.  So even though it's not a chemistry topic, it's relevant to all of us by one or two degrees of separation.

The views expressed this week are those of this author only.  They are not necessarily the views of the author's employer nor any other author at Chemistry-Blog.com.

----

In one article I read while researching this topic, one commenter made a germane point. “I think most people view a university education as a kind of Pascal’s wager. It is better to have at any cost than not have…” I think this pretty well describes the current state of higher education: universal higher education. It’s almost reached a point where it’s just assumed you’ll go to college. The statistics tell us that in the US 68.1% of 2010 high school graduates were enrolled in college in October 2010 (3% of high school graduates enlist in the military).

On its face, encouraging more participation in higher education is a fine goal. Obama has challenged the county to lead the world in college graduates by 2020. How can there be a problem being more educated? But that’s not the whole picture of the current state of higher education. Tuition costs are rising, debt loads are rising, and some argue the return on investment isn’t what’s advertised. And some politicians are actively encouraging more and more students to buy into this system.

Read more »

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Sigma-Aldrich: "All-U-Can-Eat" styrofoam with every purchase!*

*Substitute for weird grey flaky stuff at no extra charge!

Hi, everyone. Apologies for my absurdly long absence from the blog--I've been extremely busy hammering out an enormous project and writing grant applications to the Canadian government for the past few months.

Today's post is going to be a short one, but it's a problem that's been vexing me for the entire time I've been at grad school. As the person at my lab who is charge of ordering reagents, and partially responsible for the inventory and cataloging of them, I get to see first-hand how much packaging goes into a Sigma order. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that the policies they use for determining "adequate packaging" are absurd to the point of being humourless (figures 1 & 2).

Figures 1 & 2. This is a 25g bottle of 1-decyne that we received today from Sigma, shown for scale with the size of the box and the amount of styrofoam used to ship it. This is far from the worst case of overpackaging I have seen.

Now, I understand several things:

1. These are indeed hazardous chemicals (sometimes)
2. A breakage or leak in transit would be a "non-trivial" (cf. dangerous and embarrassing) problem
3. The company is responsible for making sure that I receive the items intact and in perfect condition
4. There are numerous regulations regarding the transport and handling of these materials, both domestically and across international borders

HOWEVER. When receiving items from Strem or Alfa, the packaging isn't nearly as excessive (that is, they usually ship multiple items individually wrapped in a single box, unlike Sigma, who generally place a single item in a single box for an entire order, unless there are a series of similar items, such as various 500 mg bottles of pybox ligands). Both Alfa and Strem ship from the U.S., so I know that it isn't simply a border issue, and indeed, when things get shipped to us by Sigma from Oakville, Ontario, the reagents are still swaddled in enough layers of plastic pillows, styrofoam, grey fabric, or that weird flaky stuff to survive getting thrown out of an airplane. I've received orders where individual 1g bottles of reagents are packed in their own boxes, resulting in an entire garbage can full of packing junk after ordering only 5-10 g total of actual materials.

It may be a funny coincidence that I work in a "green chemistry" oriented laboratory, but all comedic weepiness aside, this packaging offends me every time I make an order. The amount of styrofoam alone that goes into the garbage here every week could probably fill a hot tub, and that stuff never goes away. I've found an aftermarket use for the grey fabric, and the boxes can be recycled easily, but the rest of it just goes straight to a dump.

So, I pose these questions to fellow chemists and other scientists in the States:

Does Sigma-Aldrich use the same asinine packaging policies when shipping domestically?

Does it enrage you, having to swim through a sea of styrofoam just to find your starting material?

Do you fantasize about sending back the box-o-styrofoam with a note encouraging them to re-use it?

Do you fantasize about collecting a year's worth of Sigma-foam and filling your swimming pool with it?

What is that weird greyish flaky stuff?

Nick

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Your Dream Job Awaits!

The Interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Materials Simulation (ICAMS) at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany  recently posted an opening for a post-doctoral researcher to study "Atomistic simulations of structural rearrangements at solid-solid interfaces." Shortly after the announcement was posted the email below was sent to the PSI-K community - a network created by researchers all over Europe to facilitate cooperation and collaboration in the field of electronic structure calculations. Members usually use the PSI-K listserv to distribute and receive information about workshops, conferences and job announcements.

To: PSI-K

Subject: [ PSI-K ] postdoc position at Department Atomistic Simulation ICAMS Ruhr-Univ. Bochum

Category: Job

From: juttar ogal

Date: 09-Sep-2011 17:57

Message:

I am desperately searching for eager victims - postdocs or PhD students - mine or other supervisors' - to make my workhorses and to plunder ideas from. I am a dirty Hun who seethes from jealousy out of every pore. I cannot do research myself because I'm narrow-minded, rigid-brained, and petty. Therefore, I have to recruit desperate scientists from anywhere in the world and then manage (harangue) them into submission. The smarter you are relative to me, the more I will hate you. If you complain, you will be threatened by my gang of goons - faculty and administration are all allied with me in order to achieve our clan's goal of world domination which has eluded us for the last century or so. The reward for taking up this Faustian bargain with me is good renumeration - but if you start to complain or expose the secret of my incompetence to others, especially outsiders, then you will be let go as we cannot tolerate traitors within our ranks. ALL credit for your work will go to me and my gang of inbred dullards, not to you. We are ruthless gangsters who recruit legitimate scientists from all over the world to do our work because we cannot do any of it ourselves - due to severe brain rigidity brought about by centuries of inbreeding the traits of blind obedience, robotization, and general dullness. The techniques which we employ to keep these victims productive is nagging, threats and psychological abuse, facilitated by the university's administration. Eventually, the victims give up all credit for their research to us. I have no conscience since I am a psychopath. I am entitled to success because supremacy is my birthright.

Please send your CV and three references to jutta.rogal@rub.de

The above email (and another I did not see) was soon followed by a message from the PSI-K Chairman and Vice Chairman:

Dear Psi-k members,

We want to shortly comment on the two e-mails sent last Friday by the fake user "juttar ogal". This was an unfortunate misuse of the Psi-k mailing list. Fortunately up to now it was also the only incident noted. Obviously, these e-mails were not sent by our long term Psi-k member and highly respected scientist Jutta Rogal.

We are very sorry that this has happened and will take appropriate measures for the future.

With best regards,

Peter Dederichs        Walter Temmerman

Psi-k Chairman         Psi-k Vice Chairman

Prof. Peter H. Dederichs
PGI, Forschungszentrum Jülich
D-52425 Jülich, Germany

e-mail: p.h.dederichs@fz-juelich.de

Who sent the emails? A disgruntled employee? An aspiring comedian trying to reach a larger audience? The email is clearly over the top, yet many employees can relate to some of the messages embedded in the hyperbole. Post docs and graduate students acknowledge that we are working to make our advisers famous or more famous. We know that we may not receive full credit for fame-inducing ideas.

Additionally, there are few options for graduate students and postdocs disgruntled with their bosses. Human relation's resources  are limited or underutilized in science departments. A conflict between an adviser and a graduate student results in the student joining another research group or leaving school. Postdocs move on to a new position, assuming they receive a reasonable letter of recommendation.

So is the best way to deal with these issues an anonymous, inflammatory email? Probably not. But we should acknowledge that this response alludes to greater issues within the system.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Why Pre-Meds Need to take Organic Chemistry: My Syllabus Day Speech

This is a loose transcript of the “Syllabus Day” speech I gave my Organic Chemistry I class on the first day of fall semester this week.  Organic Chemistry I is the first of a two semester sequence at my small, Midwest, liberal arts university.  Our five organic faculty cater mainly to students preparing for professional schools (I call them my pre-mees: pre-med, pre-dental, pre-pharmacy, pre-PA, etc.)

(School specific references have been removed)

Welcome!  Welcome to Organic Chemistry.  It’s 8:00am on the first day of class.  So before we start, everyone stand up, turn to the person behind you, give them a high five and say “welcome back!  How was your summer?”

Ok.  This is my second year teaching here, and you’re in the 8:00am section.  Now, I’m not naïve, so this means one of two things.  Either my reputation has preceded me, and you really wanted to be in this class even though it was at 8:00am.  Or [the cool professor]’s section was full and only the 8:00am fit in your schedule.  That’s ok, I’m ok with that.  I’m really excited that you’re all here with me.  We’re going to have a lot of fun together, and maybe learn some cool things along the way.

Let’s start with some word association.  There are a lot of preconceptions and emotions surrounding the terms organic and chemistry.  So, just shout them out, when you hear ‘organic,’ what do you think of? (healthy, carbon, no pesticides, nitrogen, more expensive…).  How about ‘chemistry?’ (molecules, elements, catalyst, periodic table of the elements…).  And when we put them together, ‘organic chemistry’? (HARD, few elements, related to life, carbon…).

Good.  These are all good associations.  These are common things that come to mind when we think about ‘organic,’ ‘chemistry,’ or ‘organic chemistry.’  Here’s what I want you to think about as we go through organic chemistry: Read more »

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Why is trust such an issue in science?

The short answer is:  science is performed by people.  Not all people are trust-worthy, but we have to assume they are otherwise no progress would be made.

I'm sure you know by now that the details of the Sames-Sezen case have just been discovered by people who thought it was worth the trouble of obtaining the 2010 report on the investigation of Sezen's methods of purposeful deceit, and made public on at least two blogs and in C&EN.   At this point, I think whatever details of the case that are out there are all that's going to be made public.  People will have to continue to wonder about the rumors circulating about the other circumstances surrounding the situation.   At least one person appears to be quite obsessed with the case beyond the bounds of investigative reporting, which is a bit odd to me and probably not very healthy, but at the end of it all, the information is out there, and science once again is self-correcting one way or another.

Image courtesy of quinn.anya on Flickr

So what to take away from this, besides some sensationalism about this being the worst case of deceit in chemistry? (I'd just like to point out that there may be worse cases out there in history.... but at any given time, the deceit could have be so good that no one ever knew it happened.  Keep that in mind.)   There was clearly a breakdown of roles between the PI and the graduate student. Conversations I've had with people in labs from a bunch of top-tier chemistry departments, and labs in research institutions, has made me realize this is much more common than we think.

A PI with people working in his or her lab, regardless of where the lab is, trusts those working in the lab will:

1. Report honest results and record those results, and the procedures required to obtain those results, in their lab notebooks.

2. Behave professionally, both in demeanor while working in the lab and in their interactions with colleagues. This includes maintaining the correct work ethic, hours, and keeping racism, sexism, or any other interfering 'isms' out of the mix.

3. Behave morally and ethically, and at a minimum, not interfere with the work of others.  Contributing to a supportive learning and work environment is preferable.  This is intricately tied to #1, and the 'isms' in #2 matter here also.

4. Uphold any group duties they are responsible for performing to help keep the lab running smoothly.

The case is a huge lesson in #1 and #3 - honesty and morality don't necessarily go hand-in-hand with science research, and unfortunately, it's a widespread problem (in anything involving humans!) that is only exemplified by what happened at Columbia.  In the instance of #1 - Yields are being inflated EVERYWHERE.  Yield and %ee inflation are a huge problem in the field of organic chemistry overall.  I know of labs where several natural products chemists have been known to add small amounts of NMR traceless material to intermediates that won't be submitted for elemental analysis or x-ray to inflate their yield.  (Why bother if you can just fudge the number on the manuscript?  Some prefer to just go that route.)  Small 1H NMR peaks are unassigned and thus reported as impurities, where they are actually part of the structure.  If reactions are performed multiple times, the best yield is reported. This goes for methodology reactions also, where the PI requires that the reaction be repeated several times.  PI's often don't respect or favor students who do not produce phenomenal results, and high-pressure, pre-tenure, or frequently-publishing labs aren't the place you want to be if you can't get your reactions working.

Don't even get me started on #2.  An example of the breakdown of #2 (professionalism) and #3 (morality & ethics) is a recentracism issue - it's clearly not dead, either, especially in a field where up to half of group members or post docs or research scientists aren't American, and I bet every one of you reading this has an anecdote for that, be you American of any race, or not.

This crap makes me want to scream.

For #3... there are labs where people lock their notebooks in their desk drawers to protect their ideas and their chemistry from their own group members.  People lock group glassware in their drawers to prevent access as well.  Maybe that's annoying, but members of labs actually go out of their way to feed misinformation, or omit crucial information, to other group members who need to reproduce the work (in examples where the chemistry DOES work). I know of one example recently where a new post doc joined a group and couldn't get a particular reaction to work with the conditions he was given, and only AFTER being given some crap by his PI did the people who gave him those conditions pretend to say "oops, we forgot to tell you about this crucial ingredient that is required for this reaction to work."   Surely you know of a story where someone has spiked someone's air-sensitive reaction with D2O?  I know I'm not the only one who is collecting these types of accounts just by being in an organic lab and in graduate school.

Copyright © 2011 by ScienceCartoonsPlus.com

Of course a PI is accountable for anything happening within the realm of their lab, but in truth, it is literally impossible to micromanage or keep track of every solitary day-to-day activity and movement of every person in their group, regardless of the size, but especially if it is a 15+ member group.   Let's just admit it - not all PI's go over every piece of data, every spectrum, and every word in a Supporting Information file, because, perhaps, they've seen the project progress, know where the pitfalls were and how the student(s) dealt with it, and thus trusts the student(s) to report accurately.  I know of many faculty members who don't read Supporting Info of papers they submit, either because they trust the students, don't have the time to read them, or are so famous and busy that it doesn't even occur to them that they should be doing that, if they even care.  (How many times have you tried to reproduce a simple prep and found yourself unable to get anywhere near the reported yield? There's a good chance that it was inaccurately reported because of crap like this.)  We can use the Sezen example to say Sames was a shitty PI for not looking at the data, but in that case, it's possible that looking at the data wouldn't have revealed jack because of how thorough her deceit was, especially if the spectra with the white-out didn't happen to be those under review!  He has since changed his ways (see in comments to the blogs linked above), but others haven't necessarily learned from his example.

What about what students rely on their PI to do?  This is arguably more complex, because there are probably more variants of PI-styles than there are student-styles.  In my opinion, PI's are expected to:

1. Monitor their students and post docs. At a bare minimum, know what project they are working on, at what stage of the project they are in, and be aware of any problems occurring.

2. Monitor their laboratory.  Designate individuals to be in charge of duties, keep updated on the function of instruments and equipment, and otherwise be aware of whatever necessary to keep the lab running smoothly. Enforce group rules and performance standards.

3. Same as for students:  Behave professionally, both in demeanor while working in the lab and in their interactions with colleagues. This includes maintaining the correct work ethic, hours, and keeping racism, sexism, or any other interfering 'isms' out of the mix.

4. Same as for students: Behave morally and ethically.  Contributing to a supportive learning and work environment is preferable.  I wish I could add 'treat lab members like human beings' but that might be asking too much.

5.  Publish in a timely fashion, and make sure that students are on a path that will result in some sort of publication.

6. Acquire $ to run lab.

7. Communicate with group members the expectations the PI has for them, and communicate if/when those expectations aren't being met.

We trust when we select a PI that they will meet these bare minimum requirements, using word-of-mouth as a primary tool the majority of the time to learn about a certain professor's reputation as a PI.  Sometimes that's not enough, and people find themselves switching groups when they aren't happy with their lab or PI - it happens, and hopefully departments are amenable to that kind of necessary switch in the event of a student-PI mismatch.  Selecting a PI has grave consequences on the next 5-6+ years of our lives directly, and indirectly on the rest of our careers.   It's not just about the science, it's about our futures, the rest of our so-short, singular lives.  Arguably, a PI has more influence on his or her students' lives and careers than vice-versa, so the obligations of the PI in control/power/position of authority are paramount to uphold.

Sadly, despite the obligation a PI has to see his/her students through their career in graduate school, we still see students getting kicked out of labs at the start of their 5th year for no explicitly stated reason, not allowed to return after a medical or personal leave of absence despite not disclosing that possibility, women and men being treated unequally (either better or worse depending on the PI), not at all supervising their students or maintaining a presence in the lab, letting research papers ready for publication sit on their desk for multiple years until it's too late to publish it, etc.  I'm in my fifth of six years in my program, and I can't even begin to describe the absolute bullsh#* I've witnessed in the treatment of graduate students.  I used to think that senior graduate students were jaded because of how hard they worked for so long - but for me, it's not so - it's because of what I've seen go on around me and experienced first-hand moreso than how intellectually and physically exhausted I am.  The bottom line is that there is no accountability required for PI's the way there is for students, and tenure has everything to do with it.  It forces labs to churn out results and be amazing, which puts pressures on everyone involved, and then if and when tenure is obtained, inadequate performance won't necessarily lead to consequences (other than the obvious detriment to the career of whoever is involved).

 

But what can we do, besides trust that our PIs will help us get to where we need to go?  Trust that more often than not, PI's are functional human beings who treat everyone else like human beings and care enough about the people and the science in the lab to pay attention?  Usually, this is the case, but there will always be people, projects, and situations that fall through the cracks.

I doubt graduate students or post docs are buying many of these.

Trust is an issue in science because science is performed by human beings.  Trust is an issue because money, careers, and reputations are at stake, and there is no way that the PI's that run labs can be privy to every event that occurs under their watch without sacrificing other duties (particularly #5 and #6, getting $$ and publishing, and teaching also).  Science requires that knowledge either be discovered or that it be created, and it requires that it happens swiftly and elegantly.  In order for us to keep up we have to trust that our PI's will do right by us in the ways I've mentioned and they have to trust that we will do right by them in the ways I've mentioned, and everyone hopes the dynamics are functional and continue to be so.  Money seems to be the root of all evil here - pushing us to achieve, publish, succeed much faster than we can even acquire results, so that we can fund the continuing cycle.  Honest, hardworking faculty often don't get tenure because they aren't ruthless enough, don’t make strategic “friends” and develop collaborations, don’t play politics correctly in their department or field, don't publish enough or aren't creative enough - and therefore don't get the funding they need to succeed.  (How much of it is luck, anyway?)  As long as limited funding makes us as motivated as we are to publish our science, and as long as we all are human beings, we are going to have to trust each other to do and publish good science.  There's only so much policing that can be done here.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Artificial Leaf or Solar Powered Electrosynthesis?

The tendency for sensationalism in science reporting is a problem. Phrases in a peer-reviewed article that say “this discovery could lead to applications such as x, y, and z” undergo a sensationalist spin when it’s reported that scientists have “discovered a cure for cancer,”  “found THE cause of schizophrenia," or “increased solar cell efficiency by 50%!” Sometimes the reporter facilitates the translation. Other times it is the researcher. The unfortunate result of this type of reporting is desensitization and, even worse, an increased skepticism of scientific claims. When a really important discovery comes along it is appropriately met with “AGAIN? Really?” and “well, then where is my flying car?”  For the sake of maintaining the public’s trust and support, scientists should do what they can to avoid sensationalism. To avoid sensationalism in the area of solar fuels research we should be more thoughtful and critical about the use of the term “artificial leaf.”

A leaf in nature uses the energy in sunlight to split water and convert carbon dioxide into energy-rich sugars, adenosine triphosphate, and other organic molecules in a process we know as photosynthesis. This complex process contains a number of stepwise events involving geometrically organized proteins and small molecules located in the chloroplast. I am not going to discuss the individual steps but I encourage everyone to read up on this incredible machinery. The question I now pose is this: how close to natural photosynthesis does a solar fuel cell have to be for us to reasonably consider it an artificial leaf? Is it enough that a device absorbs sunlight and makes chemical bonds? If that is the case then a bond forming reaction driven by a solar-powered hotplate could be considered an artificial leaf. Is it defined by the chemical bonds that are formed or is a well-defined molecular geometry for the photon absorption and electron transfer events sufficient? An official line between artificial photosynthesis and solar powered chemistry has not yet been drawn. I do not set out to define that line here but I do want to call attention to the differences in recent “artificial leaf” devices and describe how they fall short of their aspiring names while simultaneously indicating that a true artificial leaf may be imminent.

One “artificial leaf” receiving buzz at the moment is being publicized by MIT professor Daniel Nocera. The catalytic portion of this artificial leaf has a cobalt phosphate thin-film anode and a yet to be published nickel cathode.  When these electrodes are submerged in a pH 7 phosphate-buffered aqueous solution and a potential of 1.3 V vs NHE is applied, water is catalytically oxidized at the anode to give O₂. The remaining protons are reduced at the cathode to give hydrogen.  The hydrogen and oxygen can then be used for hydrogen fuel cells.

The applied potential to run the catalysts can come from any source: a water-wheel, a wind turbine, a person riding a bicycle equipped with a generator or any other device that generates electricity. In the case of Nocera’s artificial leaf the potential is created by hooking the electrocatalytic device described above to a silicon solar cell. By describing the device in this way I try to emphasize why I dislike its designation as an “artificial leaf.” It is only an artificial leaf in the most superficial sense in that it converts sunlight into molecular bonds. However, in a more logistical sense it is simply a solar cell (a more than 125 year old technology) attached by wires to a electrocatalytic cell (a more than 200 year old technology).

I am in no way trying to belittle the research of Professor Nocera but I am questioning the use of the descriptor “artificial leaf” rather than focusing on the device’s interesting and important materials. The water oxidation catalyst is not only composed of relatively inexpensive cobalt ions but it can also be electrodeposited on an electrode from a solution of Co²⁺ and phosphate. The importance of electrodeposition is twofold: 1) it makes production of the catalyst relatively easy and 2) it offers a mechanism for self-repair of the catalytic material.

When the line is drawn a true artificial leaf should, at the very least, integrate the two devices into one operational component that generates charges (ideally on a molecular level) and delivers oxidative/reductive equivalents to the catalysts. A simplified, one component system may also reduce the production and operational costs of such a device. Professor Nocera, his collaborator Professor Buonassisi and their colleagues have taken one step closer to a true artificial leaf in their recent publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In this paper they describe a device where they combined the two component system into one by depositing the electrocatalytic cobalt material directly onto a silicon solar cell. The device can be seen below (not pictured are the Ag/AgCl reference and the platinum counter electrodes):

In this device’s architecture a standard p-n junction silicon solar cell  is coated on one side with metal contact and semi-transparent photoresist. The other side of the solar cell is coated with an indium tin oxide (ITO) layer and then the catalytic cobalt phosphate thin film. Under illumination the silicon absorbs photons to generate an exciton (a bound electron hole pair) which is separated at the p-n interface to give a free hole and an electron. The electron travels to the metal contact and then to the external circuit while the holes travel through the ITO layer to the cobalt film. The cobalt film then catalytically oxidizes H₂O to O₂.

When a silicon wafer is put under illumination in an aqueous solution an insulating layer of SiO₂ will form that kills the photocurrent. The key to using a silicon solar cell in this architecture is to passivate the surface of silicon with photoresist and ITO so the silicon will not get oxidized. Using this strategy they created a device that can generate oxygen from water consistently for at least 6 days.

Although the device is predominantly driven by photon energy, a single silicon solar cell unfortunately does not have the driving force to oxidize water. An external applied potential was still necessary to generate O₂. Despite this shortcoming, this is a great proof-of-concept device that, as the paper states, is “analogous to the wireless current in natural photosynthesis.” (It can be argued that the ITO in this case is acting as the wire but that is just more semantics). With further optimization, possibly involving a tandem solar cell architecture, I have no doubt we will see a fully functioning device within the next few years.

Although I do not think we have yet created a true “artificial leaf” and that we should be vigilant to avoid sensationalism, results like those described above as well as progress in other solar fuel strategies signal that man-made photosynthesis is on the horizon and a future powered by solar fuels is within our grasp.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Skillful writing of an awful research paper

Apparently, laboratory instructors and undergraduate mentors aren't the only ones with the bane of reading insanely terrible research papers - the editor of the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry, Royce Murray, clearly has had his fill as well, according to his editorial in the current ASAPs.

His humor is very similar to that found in The Onion, and reminded me of How to Write a Scientific Paper on Improbable Research.

Brilliant. The only thing that has made me laugh out loud this hard lately was catching a part of the show 'Ancient Aliens' on the History Channel last night in which someone said that "one possible explanation of why the Mayans vanished was because they were aliens."

In all seriousness, though, it is an understatement to say it's quite obvious that scientific writing isn't emphasized as well as it should be, it should be addressed at the undergraduate level as early as possible.

Subscribe to the comments for this post

The Wiley Interscience Blues

Hello, everyone!  Since this is my first post on Chemistry Blog, I should introduce myself.  My name is Nick, and I'm a Ph.D. student in organic chemistry at McGill University, in Montreal.  Mitch contacted me via the chemistry subreddit, and I'll be writing a few articles with what I hope is a unique perspective.  In advance, I would ask that you excuse my Canadian spellings; the letter "u" will pop up a lot more often than you're used to.

As anyone who regularly reads scientific journals may have noticed, Wiley redesigned some of their website earlier this year.  Mid-way through the summer, they slicked up their Interscience pages to look more "Web 2.0", and in the process, broke integration with one of my favourite things, which is Zotero.  Zotero was previously mentioned on the site quite some time ago, as one of several reference management programs available to modern researchers.  Given that it's free, absurdly easy to use, efficient, fast, allows proxies, and acts as a bridge between OpenOffice and Firefox (with downloadable reference formats), I unabashedly support the abandonement of every other reference management system in favour of it.  Zotero makes collecting references and writing papers a breeze, and a whole lot more enjoyable than any other option I've tried.

What Wiley did to break Zotero's flow was very simple.  Instead of having direct links to actual PDF files as part of their abstract pages (as nearly every other online publishing website does), they now direct you to a PDF file within an "iframe", meaning that Zotero is not able to "see" the PDF as an actual PDF.  This allows them to place a highly annoying "Wiley Interscience" bar at the top, including your institutional logo, and links to citing articles, abstract, and supplementary info, as seen blow.

This would be okay, except that with Zotero absolutely none of those links are necessary.  When you do the one-click save on an abstract it automatically generates a snapshot of the abstract page, including links to all that information.  Normally, it also saves a copy of the PDF, but Wiley has now made this significantly more complicated.  You must now either save the iframe page as a snapshot (including the annoying header and useless links), or download the PDF separately, import into Zotero, then delete the original download to avoid having duplicate copies on your hard drive.  So basically, instead of a one-click save, you now have an option of a four-step non-PDF download (via the "add item" button, seen above at the bottom left), or a five-step (take snapshot, navigate to "pdf", download, import, delete) rigmarole.

Compare this to ACS Publications, or ScienceDirect, where you click once on the address bar icon, and get all the above done in about 5 seconds (see below), or even ThiemeConnect, where you simply have to add the PDF as a separate item, and Wiley's "site improvements" actually begin to look like a big step backwards.

I've e-mailed Wiley about this twice, and it seems that their support staff have no idea what Zotero is, or why this is important, and don't seem to care.    Ultimately this isn't a huge issue, but I would really love to see a return to the old functionality; as it stands right now I cringe every time I see a paper I want hosted by Wiley Interscience.

Nick

Subscribe to the comments for this post

Something Deeply Wrong With Chemistry

An example of what is currently wrong with chemistry culture, even though it is dated.

Future chemistry faculty will have to be twice as smart, work with twice the efficiency, and reach the correct positions of influence if they want this type of unhealthy cultural attitudes to finally be put to rest. This is my goal at least.

Update 1: Guido Koch now.

Update 2: The underlying macroeconomic cause for why professors can get away with this behavior.

Update 3: This story has really struck a cord, thank you for sharing this link and supplying our first 20,000 visitor day!

Update 4: A transcribed letter from Robert Tjian

From now on, I or someone designated by me will take attendance at group meetings starting at 9:10 am. If you are not there, I will not sign your salary sheets. Also, if you haven't noticed the number of people working on weekends and nights in the lab is the worst I've seen in my 17 years. The frequency of vacation, time taken off and other non-lab activities is bordering on the ridiculous. In case you forgot, the standard amount of time you are supposed to take is 2 weeks a year total, including Christmas. If there isn't a substantial improvement in the next few months, I'll have to think of some draconian measures to "motivate" you. I also want to say that the average lab citizenship and community spirit of keeping the lab in functioning order is at an all-time low. Few people seem to care about fixing broken equipment and making sure things in the lab run smoothly. If the lab were extremely productive and everyone was totally focused on their work, I might understand the slovenliness but productivity is abysmal and if we continue along this path we will surely reach mediocrity in no time.

Finally, those of you who are "lame ducks" because you have a job and are thinking of your own nibs, so long as you are here you are still full-fledged members of this lab, which means participating in all aspects of the lab (i.e. group meetings, Asilomar, postdoc seminars, etc.)

I realize that this memo won't solve all the problems. so I am going to schedule a meeting with each one of you starting this Saturday and Sunday and continuing on weekends until I've had a chance to speak with everyone and to give you a formal evaluation. Sign up for an appointment time on the sheet outside my door.

This is the first time I've had to actually write a memo of this type and I hope
it's the last time.

Robert Tjian

Update 5: Erick Carreira responds in an interview with Christopher Shea from The Boston Globe, vaguely claims the letter may have been a joke (link: Chemist who ordered night and weekend work replies to critics). Selected quote below:

I wonder whether you would think it fair to be judged on the basis of a letter 14 years old, especially when the comments and rash judgments are made without knowledge of the context or the circumstances surrounding the individuals involved. Indeed how does anyone out who is so quick to pass judgement and who is coming to conclusions know that it is not part of a 14-year old joke (or satire as you state) that backfired? ...

Update 6: Comparatively tame letters from Paul Gassman and Albert Meyers, but they have some good information in them about standard expectations.

If you have similar letters you would like to share send them in. Any identifying information can be removed upon request.

Mitch

Subscribe to the comments for this post

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Does anyone else have a difficult time trying to separate “good science” from “bad science”?  I’m a very black and white person.  I love facts and truths and logic, and that drives most of my family crazy.  Perhaps that’s why I struggle with identifying bad science; there’s seemingly no clear-cut, concise way of identifying junk that ends up published.  To be clear, I’m not talking about retractions for blatant disregard for scientific ethics.  I’d classify these situations (e.g., the Xenobe controversy, Sames’ retractions, Bell Labs, etc.) as “ugly.”  I’m particularly concerned with cases where during a presentation everyone sort of looks at each other, raises his/her eyebrows, frowns, and collectively mumbles, “Hmm.”

It seems the term “junk science” has been in use in the legal profession since the 1980’s.  Yet, despite its existence, “junk science” is actually an ambiguous concept.  In 1998, legal experts Edmond and Mercer attempted to conquer this beast by identifying “good science,” then considering outlying cases “bad.”  Here’s what they considered “the good”:

“’Good science’ is usually described as dependent upon qualities such as falsifiable hypotheses, replication, verification, peer-review and publication, general acceptance, consensus, communalism, universalism, organized skepticism, neutrality, experiment/empiricism, objectivity, dispassionate observation, naturalistic explanation, and use of the scientific method.”

Does this list really mean that everything else is considered “junk”?  I can think of a few brilliant studies that used trial and error methods in lieu of the scientific method.  Conversely, I’m aware of peer-reviewers who simply check the “publish” box without actually reading the manuscript.  As is argued on several other blogs, identifying “junk science” is a very gray area.

Perhaps one way to define junk science is to take the Jacobellis v. Ohio approach.  In a 1964 US Supreme Court case involving obscenity, Justice Stewart Potter wrote in his opinion, “I shall not today attempt to define the kinds of material I understand to be [pornography]…but I know it when I see it.”  Clearly the same frame of thought can be applied to junk science.  I am less inclined to accept the Jacobellis approach because it offers nothing tangble.

There must be some empirical qualities that set the good from the bad.  Despite all the skills I’ve learned with a mere decade of lab experience, I am disheartened to admit that I honestly never perfected the skill of detecting bad science.  So, like a responsible, up-and-coming assistant professor of chemistry, I went crawling through the literature to determine what separates the good from the bad.  Below is a list of a few things I learned.

In the spirit of Jeff Foxworthy, science might be “junk” if…

Researchers are more concerned with holding press conferences than publishing results in reputable, peer-reviewed journals. One might assume that “breakthroughs” ought to be showcased in the most prestigious journals after being subjected to a rigorous peer review process.  Fast tracking all the way to the press conference phase certainly raises some flags about credibility.  I’ve seen this phenomenon happen first-hand, and when the science is questionable, the ensuing public announcement can get really ugly (and entertaining, for that matter).

Something about the research seems off kilter. If you think something doesn’t feel right, you might be correct.  Although going with your gut will only get you so far, analysis guides such as “Tipsheet: For Reporting on Drugs, Devices and Medical Technologies” help identify specific areas for journalists to consider when examining the veracity of medical therapies.  Cook and co-workers suggested that similar checklists might likewise serve the general scientific community when evaluating the credibility of reported work.

Conflicts of interest are not explicitly disclosed. In these cases, scientific integrity might be compromised for financial, political, or other external motivations.  In developing this article, I encountered journals, funding agencies, and governing bodies that require authors to declare any potential conflicts of interest while publishing or applying for grants.  Although editors and referees try to uphold strict transparency policies, authors can still fail to report external influences and biasing.  These cases essentially touch every facet of research--cancer, testing pesticides (Berkley Scientif. J. 2009, 13, 32-34), and even drug development.  The onus is put on the audience to look into the author’s sources of funding.

The flow of logic doesn’t make any sense. Junk science may have gaping holes in experimental descriptions or proposed models.  Fortunately, overly simplistic and inaccurate scientific explanations usually evoke sharp criticism from the scientific experts.  Credible “debunkers” often attack the logic of an issue by (for example) discrediting cited authoritative opinions, identifying assumptions, and/or offering overlooked hypotheses.

Colleagues in the field are widely skeptical of the work. Mix it up with your cohorts.  A simple, “Hey, what did you think about the most recent (insert name of researcher here) article in JOC,” can shed some light on the context of published or presented findings.  “[He] hasn’t published anything reproducible in the past 20 years,” my PI once said.  “I sincerely doubt that this latest paper is anything new.”

Subscribe to the comments for this post

How Can Science Embrace Web 2.0: A Response to Rudy Baum

(This post is in response to the May 10 editorial in C&E News.  For the response to the April 19 editorial, click here)

First, I want to thank Rudy Baum, editor-in-chief of C&E News, for taking the time to respond to my commentary.  I know he probably has other issues he'd rather talk about on his editorial page, and I appreciate the engagement in this dialogue.

I'd like to continue the dialogue here and I hope to keep this conversation going - at least informally - for a long time.

Mr. Baum and I seem to agree that Web 2.0 is a part of science now; however, we may disagree on the merits of SciW2.0.  If you don't believe SciW2.0 has arrived, consider that the fact that you are even privy to this conversation.  Not only do I have a W2.0 platform upon which I can comment on C&E News editorials, but within days the comments were populated with a who's who of SciW2.0 leaders offering their opinions and helping shape the conversation.  And the conversation became so loud that it prompted an editor-in-chief to write an entire editorial in response to, essentially, a nobody in the chemistry world (let's face it.  I certainly don't count myself in the elite of chemistry, blind or not).  That all of these things can happen within a month - and without any face-to-face meetings between any of the players - proves the establishment of SciW2.0 as a communication tool.

Now, before we continue, I want to re-link to this blog post on Nature's Nascent blog.  In my opinion, this post is a must read for anyone who wants to engage this discussion.  It is a nice overview of SciW2.0, its strengths and especially its weaknesses.  Why there's resistance to SciW2.0, why academic and industry leaders aren't all buying in, and why he's committed to making SciW2.0 successful.  It really is mandatory, and I'll wait for you to click over and read it now.

(lounge music break)

While severely cautioning people about SciW2.0 (but not denouncing), Baum seems to want to walk a fine line.  It's dangerous, it's not a panacea, he reads blogs, he's not an opponent of all W2.0, he agrees with author Jaron Lanier when he warns scientists not to adopt W2.0 ideals, and he finds proponents of W2.0 overenthusiastic.  Perhaps he is just cautioning scientists against 'irrational exuberance' when it comes to buying in to SciW2.0.  And those warnings would be well heeded (although I doubt we're anywhere near the irrationally exuberant days of SciW2.0).  My question for Baum is: if he doesn't think SciW2.0 is a panacea, does he think the current model for scientific communication (peer-reviewed journals) is a utopia?  And if not, what would he suggest happen differently?

As to his comment about the panacea of W2.0 and how it 'changes everything' as he says W2.0 proponents adamantly claim, I suspect he's referring to Don Tapscott's and Anthony Williams' book Wikinomic: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.  I haven't read it, so I can't comment on it.  But I would imagine, as is true in other areas of life, when people mention 'everything,' they rarely mean things like cutting edge academic and scientific research.  Rather, I imagine people mean 'everyday things,' usually for everyday people.  I'll link here to notes by Will Richardson on W2.0 and how it's changing politics, government, journalism, and business, and how it is starting to change education.  So while it seems to be changing certain industries, I'll admit that it's not changing everything.  In fact, I don't think any of the commenters on the other post thought so, either.  Pop science is not the same as pop culture and does not think the same way.  Comments made in one arena are not necessarily transferable to the other arena.

But rather than getting into a hair-splitting contest over who used what words and who meant what, I propose to move the conversation forward in a different direction.  My open question: What should SciW2.0 look like, and how will we know it's successful?

W2.0 is ultimately a communication tool.  It harnesses the power and dexterity of the internet and allows people to communicate with each other in ways never before possible and on timescales never before possible.  In certain circles (politics, pop culture), if you're not actively following the W2.0 scene, you're way behind and have nothing to bring to the table.  Not so in SciW2.0.  If you're following SciW2.0, you're reading about and reacting to people's analysis of things that happened in the past.  Missing a week or two won't put you behind, because by and large you've already read the same papers and seen the same announcements.

I doubt that SciW2.0 will become an instant data/paper communicating tool for hard science anytime soon the way it has in other aspects of life.  I agree with the reasoning by Timo Hannay in the Nascent link:

[E]ven if the direct financial cost of sharing this information is low, the cost in terms of scooped findings, rejected papers and grant applications, and perhaps even diminished reputation could be very high. ... It's sad, but most scientists don't publish in order to share results with their peers, they do so in order to secure grant funding and promotions. We know this because when we provide ways of sharing information that do not affect their likelihood of getting funding or promotions – such as preprint servers for biologists – most don't use them.

There will always be a place for reactionary SciW2.0.  Communities of people talking about science and sharing ideas and information cannot hurt anyone.  But because there's rarely breaking news coverage on SciW2.0 (see Totally Synthetic's sodium hydride oxidation post for an example of breaking news coverage), the majority of chemists don't seem to find the need to tune in regularly.

Before we'll get large numbers of people on board, in my opinion, might we need to make SciW2.0 less reactionary and more innovative?   I think we've started seeing bits and pieces of that scattered throughout, and that might be how we make it more appealing to the science community at large.  I mentioned in the comments previously that ACS had their NanoTube contest, which asked users to upload original videos explaining 'What is Nano' in an clear and entertaining way.  Perhaps this is the way science utilizes W2.0 in a productive manner.  Demystifying aspects of science to make it accessible to anyone curious about science, but perhaps without the training.

But, as the Nascent link alludes to, other types of crowd sourcing have not been as successful.  Nature's open peer-review system posted a small number of 'opt in' papers online and asked the crowd to review and comment on them before being accepted to the journal.  The open peer-review process happened concurrently with the 'typical' closed, anonymous peer-review process.  As noted if you listen to the audio version of the talk, it added no apparent value, but a lot more work for the Nature folks, so they abandoned the experiment.  I suspect it was just ahead of its time.

We may look to the results of a current crowd sourcing experiment to see if the time is right yet.  The Haystack, one of CENtral Science's child blogs, reports on the expansion of the Pool for Open Innovation against Neglected Tropical Diseases.  In this experiment, scientists dump patented information into an open pool, and different users around the world are able to access the data to try to make progress on treatments for neglected diseases.  It will be interesting to watch that story unfold over the next few years.

I guess I don't really know what SciW2.0 needs to look like to be successful. ... But I bet I know a way to get some of the brightest minds in the field together to think about it communally!   I'd love to hear from people what their ideas are for the future of SciW2.0 and how to make it more commonplace in the field.

Finally, I'd like to say to Baum (and everyone else reading), if you haven't read Who Moved My Cheese?, then pick it up from the library on the way home tonight and read it.  It will take maybe an hour, and it can be read in the easy chair after dinner while watching 24 if you'd like.  The cheese is moving, Rudy, I just don't know where to, yet.

Subscribe to the comments for this post