How can we make the International Year of Chemistry successful?

2011 has been designated by the UN as the "International Year of Chemistry". As a community of chemists, for us the question is simple: What can we do to make this year successful and enhance the public's appreciation of chemistry? Here are three core aspects of chemistry which I think should be constantly highlighted:

1. Explain to the public the essential nature and unique philosophy of chemistry: As a field, chemistry is inherently more challenging to pitch to the public compared to physics or biology. If you are a physicist and you say to a layman that you are investigating the Big Bang, you don't have to say anything more to get his or her attention. A biologist who works on human evolution will get similar nods. But what about chemists? One of the reasons for the relatively dim public appreciation of chemical science was mentioned before; it is because the field apparently lacks "big ideas" that people can instantly latch on to (but see below). But what chemistry may lack in terms of the grand picture, it more than compensates for in terms of its identity as a "central science" and the sheer number of explanations and applications that it lends to almost every other discipline, from physics and biology to art and engineering. No other field does this in such a palpable way. In this sense chemistry is akin to engineering, but much more fundamental.

The chemist more than any other kind of scientist is a discerning arbiter of patterns and a patterner of chaos. One of the most striking manifestations of this quality is in the beautiful structures that chemists draw and encounter every single day. Chemists look at structures the way artists look at mosaics of colors and architects look at geometric patterns of tiles. What other kind of scientist spends his or her professional workday doodling and evaluating lines, rings and their myriad intersections? In its ability for visualization and pattern analysis, chemistry comes closer to art than any other science, and the public needs to appreciate this supremely important aspect of the discipline.

But it is in its ability to make new things which never existed before that chemistry is wholly unique. In the last few years synthesis and especially total synthesis have taken some flak as somewhat self-serving activities geared toward factory-style publication and the nurturing of slave labor, but it cannot be denied that synthesis is what makes chemistry different from all other disciplines. No other science can boast the creation of new substances that have improved every facet of human life, from the conquest of disease to the feeding of the poor. Of course chemistry also led to poison gas and nerve gas but this was true of other disciplines too. The fact remains that chemistry has modeled and sculpted the material world familiar to the layman more than any other science. Other fields provided valuable input to the principles behind synthesis, but the end products were those of chemistry alone, shining examples of the very ability of human beings to create, manipulate and improve. In the future chemistry promises us improved materials for alternative energy and designer drugs and biomolecules for treating disease. Convince the layman of the enduring centrality of synthesis, and you would have convinced him or her of the essential value of chemistry.

2. Push the origin of life as chemistry's "big idea": We mentioned above that chemistry seems to suffer from a lack of big ideas as compared to physics and biology and that this is partly responsible for its lackluster public perception. But as I indicated in my last post, there is actually a problem as big as any other which is primarily within the domain of chemistry. This is the origin of life within its broader framework of self-assembly. God must have been a molecular self-assembler, because without self-assembly the first components of life could not bond to each other and the first cells could not form and segregate their cargo, sparking the interactions and reactions that led to replication and metabolism. Darwin solved the second problem of what happens when life gets started, but not the first one of how it all began. Again, other sciences will continue to contribute to the unraveling of this problem, but the first step was uniquely chemical. A narrating of the origin of life as a quintessentially chemical question would also lead to a general exposition on self-assembly (important in diseases caused by protein misfolding) as well as a spirited homily on the central importance of weak interactions and hydrogen bonding.

3. Emphasize the crucial connections of chemistry with medicine and materials science again, and again and again...: It's official. The biggest practical contributions of chemistry to the betterment of human life have undoubtedly been in the discovery of new drugs and new materials. It is remarkable that every one of us benefits from these tangibles at every moment of day and night and yet fails to recognize the essential role that chemistry played in their creation. Since almost all of us know someone who has been afflicted or taken by a terrible malady, one would think that the public would be singing chemistry's praises for saving lives. Yet most people seem to think that it's doctors who discover new medicines. Quiz people about great medical advances and they would enthusiastically tell you about Alexander Fleming and Jonas Salk, but not about Gerhard Domagk or Gertrude Elion. This perception has got to change. Chemists are as responsible as doctors, if not more, for most of the live-saving drugs developed in the past century and will be responsible for many more in the coming one. The era of rational drug discovery was essentially ushered in by chemistry, and it will likely bring us novel advances in the form of designer proteins and small molecules as selective drugs against new threats. The public needs to know this crucial function of chemistry, and it can only be accomplished by drilling the facts into the public's mind eloquently and ad nauseam.

The other field where chemistry promises world-changing discoveries is in materials science and nanotechnology, especially as applied to energy. With climate change looming on the horizon, the next generation of breakthrough solar cells or other technologies may change the lives of millions, dramatically reduce our carbon footprint and impact the international geopolitical landscape. A central player in this seismic shift will undoubtedly be chemistry. The public now thinks very highly of nanotechnology but very few people realize that chemists have been practicing nanotechnology since their discipline gradually emerged from the shadows of alchemy. Polymers have revolutionized our lives as much as anything else. In the future polymers will contribute in novel ways such as drug delivery vehicles and smart materials in electronics engineering and space science. Organic electronics is another lucrative area of polymer science which will pay huge dividends in improving communications technology, leading to improvements in everything from healthcare to education. As the world inches closer to potentially devastating climate change and its global and social repercussions, chemistry will undoubtedly play its important role in saving the planet.

By bridging all other disciplines, enabling human progress and knitting the tapestry of the material universe, chemistry encircles the world. This is our chance to let everyone know.

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The "greatest" chemist ever, and the nature of chemistry

Let's kick off the International Year of Chemistry with one of those somewhat pointless but endearing and endlessly entertaining questions: Who was the greatest chemist ever? Paul@Chembark and the Nature Chemistry crowd have dived into the discussion by conducting informal polls.

Linus Pauling seems to be voted at the top by common consensus. But to me the lack of agreement on the other names seems to be both a tribute to the diverse nature of chemistry as well as an indicator of problems with its public image. Consider the numero uno himself. Rather than making one single, very deep contribution like Einstein's relativity or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, Pauling became the greatest chemist ever through the sheer variety of contributions he made to disparate branches of chemistry: the quantum mechanical basis of chemical bonding, the structure of crystals, the structure of proteins and the molecular basis of genetic diseases to name a few. Some of these contributions do stand out for their depth but the name of the game here is "diversity" which is at the soul of chemistry. Pauling's contributions as well as his status as the leading scientist in his field also highlight the problems with the public perception of chemistry- the fact that the field lacks "big problems" which can be latched on to by the public imagination. For physicists it's the origin of the universe, for biologists it's evolution. But chemistry is usually seen as a utilitarian and enabling science which contributes to revolutions in other fields but lacks deep, defining questions of its own.

However I beg to slightly differ here. There is in fact one problem, as deep and fundamental as any in physics and biology, which is essentially chemical. This problem is the origin of life. Life started out unquestionably as a molecular event. Other disciplines certainly bear on this problem in important ways but the way the origin of life started off constitutes a quintessentially chemical conundrum. Darwin took off where chemistry left off; ironically it is the first step that's still the big mystery while the succeeding steps have been worked out in spectacular detail. More broadly, the origin-of-life problem boils down to the problem of self-assembly which is also important in other applied areas like protein folding and nanotechnology. So if chemists want to really pitch an abiding single problem in their field with important repercussions for the human race to the public, they cannot do better than the origin of life and self-assembly. They could start with origins and end by talking about amyloid, Alzheimer's disease and supramolecular circuits, covering a vast scientific landscape which demonstrates the reach and impact of chemical science.

But back to the greatest chemist ever. At its heart chemistry is an experimental science, more so than physics where mathematical elegance may play roles which are as important as experimental observations. Any list of greatest chemists should include some of the great experimentalists in the field, people whose contributions led to techniques that revolutionized the reach of chemistry. In the list of greats cited by the others, one name seemed conspicuously missing to me- that of Fred Sanger. Not only is Sanger the only person to win two chemistry Nobel Prizes, but the techniques that he discovered- protein and DNA sequencing- underlie all of modern biochemistry and the genomics revolution. If you want to make a case for a chemist fundamentally altering the progress of human life, Sanger is as good a case as any and his absence on the lists is surprising and regrettable. One can also talk about Kary Mullis and PCR, but Sanger's contributions encompass a much wider swathe of basic science.

If chemistry as a science has been driven as much by techniques as ideas, one can also talk about the pioneers of x-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy in the list of greatest chemists. However, since these contributions were necessarily group efforts it's not really possible to single out individuals, although people like Perutz, Bernal, the Braggs and Hodgkin are certainly worthy candidates. Chemistry as a science is also uniquely distinguished from other sciences by its ability to make new things, so the inclusion of synthetic chemists like Woodward and Fischer is mandatory and has duly been acknowledged. With exciting developments in protein and nano-material design looming on the horizon, who knows what new creatures would populate this traditional looking roster of synthetic giants in the future.

The fact remains that chemistry is much too diverse to be pigeonholed into narrow "big idea" boxes. But rather than bemoan this fact, chemists should proudly wear it on their lapel since it demonstrates the exhilarating possibilities inherent in chemistry's expanse. An expanse which announced its presence with the origin of life.

Making speculation official: More on the conservatism of leading science journals

I want to thank everyone for the interesting comments on the last post; I thought it would be best to address them in a new one since my response got too long and spawned too many thoughts for the comments section.

I want to enumerate what I think are the benefits of having a separate 'Speculations' section in journals like Science and Nature because that point perhaps did not come across very clearly. In the context of the present controversial paper on arsenic-associated life, here's what would happen in a world which reveled in speculation. The authors submit the paper to Science. The Science reviewers and editors say that the paper is interesting but that the extraordinary claims are not supported by extraordinary evidence. Nonetheless, they would be quite happy to publish it in their brand new 'Imaginings' section as food for thought for other researchers. They ask the authors to tone down their conclusions and present the paper as a set of observations with some possible interpretations; either in a preliminary findings section or a speculation section. Now someone in the comments section suggested that the authors would have rejected Science's offer in such a case. But let's give them the benefit of doubt. While by no means ecstatic, the authors grudgingly accept Science's offer. The paper now looks much more tentative and its conclusions are much more modest. It proudly features as one of the first inaugural articles in 'Imaginings'. But here's the other good thing that happens: NASA and the authors now resist the temptation to present and sensationalize the work in a press conference before publication because of course it's a little embarrassing to hype a paper explicitly marked as speculative. Everyone is happy; the reviewers, the authors, Science and the public. The media will of course still hype the paper but that's pretty much a constant anyway. Generally speaking, the evil stepmother disintegrates in a blinding flash of light, the princess marries the prince in a glade surrounded by furry creatures and everybody lives happily ever after. The End, for now at least.

I agree that this is an ideal scenario. But it has a much higher probability of being played out if Science sported an explicit section on speculation. When work being presented is speculative, both the public and the reviewers are more forgiving of its incompleteness and the authors and sponsoring agencies don't (or at least should not) feel as tempted to hype it. It appears in print exactly the way it should; as a very intriguing set of observations and experiments that deserves closer scrutiny and nothing more. Any possible earth-shattering implications can wait.

There was a thought that journals should actually become more conservative because of the increasing instances of fraud that have been reported during the last few years. The general direction of this kind of thinking is sound, but I don't think it will help scientific progress at all. Fraud in scientific publishing will continue at a minimum ambient level irrespective of whether journals are conservative or not; it's just human nature. The only way journals could significantly crack down on fraud is if they become ultra-conservative. But this would be a disaster since along with fraud it would lead to the filtering out of too many promising novel ideas. The occasional admission of fraud is a burden we have to bear for publishing the boldest flights of imagination. The best thing however is that we don't have to worry too much about the problem at all; as I mentioned earlier, the beauty of science is that it is usually an incredibly efficient self-correcting process. Unlike the rogue agent from The Matrix, fraud does not stick around for too long to cause havoc. If anything, the universal presence of blogs and online information sharing now ensures that fraud is much more swiftly recognized and dealt with than before; many recent cases can attest to this fact. If the world earlier depended on one Neo to save itself, we now have several who are up to the task.

This brings us to another point in the comments section. Some people pointed out that the proliferation of blogs and other online avenues have now actually provided more opportunities than ever to speculate, and we need not depend on elite journals for doing this. While this is undoubtedly true, I wish it solved the problem. I wish that speculation on blogs was as respected as speculation in Nature. But we don't live in that ideal world yet. For whatever reason, journals like Science and Nature are now worshipped even more than what they were before. In my own field of organic chemistry for instance, you would find many pathbreaking papers published in relatively low-impact journals in the sixties and seventies, but hardly any more. Sadly, the obsession of impact factors and the constant pressure to publish and perish have put the premier journals on a pedestal. There are unfortunately many who think that only papers in these journals are worth taking seriously. This is extremely regretful (and is definitely a topic for a separate post) but sadly it's reality. Unless this reality changes, speculation would become respectable only if it's published by Nature and Science. As was pointed out, the Annals of Improbable Research has published ideas that first make us laugh and then make us think. If you look at some of the papers in the journal which have bagged the notorious IgNobel prize, they are actually quite well-supported by data and statistical analysis. Yet regrettably, we will have to wait for at least a few generations before anyone takes the Annals as seriously as Cell or PNAS. One of my main points in the last post was that we need to make speculation not just easier but more respectable and official again. And for better or worse, for now it's going to become respectable and official only if the top journals give it a public platform.

Ultimately, what purpose will all this serve? Many of the benefits have been described; as a commentator succinctly mentioned in the earlier post, it would give the publication of preliminary ideas an official sounding board. The way the present system is set up- and the recent example makes it clear- scientists are just going to be dissuaded from publishing tentative, bold observations and ideas because of the impending public backlash. But the commentator also pointed out another important dividend; the process would perhaps make the true nature of science clear to a public which is too often fed information in black and white sound bytes.

There are rules for doing, interpreting and publishing science, just like there are rules for how to raise children. And just as the rules for raising children wonderfully break down in the face of reality, so do the rules of actual scientific research. Real science is as messy as real child rearing. It's only fair that the public knows about this process.

The beauty of it is that it all comes together in the end. The baby turns into a fine young man or woman, and science continues to flourish.

Note: The comments section makes it clear that we need to distinguish between two kinds of articles, those suitable as "Preliminary Results" and those suitable as "Speculation". The two kinds may certainly overlap; the arsenic paper would thus be primarily in a "Preliminary Results" section but the hypothesis about arsenated DNA backbones would put it into a "Speculations" section and in this case the speculation would not be toned down but kept in.

An alternative BBC list for the "educated" mind

So there's this little blurb going around on Facebook in which the BBC has listed 100 books written over the last 200 years or so and asked people how many they and their friends have read. The books are diverse and include everything from Jane Austen to J D Salinger to Harry Potter.

Obviously the BBC thinks this list is important in some way or that people who have read some of these books are educated or well-informed. There is a note informing us that most people would have read only 6 out of those 100 books. Perhaps this is startling.

But what is startling by orders of magnitude is that this list of 100 books does not include a single scientific work. Now of course people would not be expected to have read The Principia. But what about Darwin's "The Origin of Species"? Or, looking at something more modern and still pivotal, Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"? These volumes are comparable to many of the books listed by the BBC, certainly in terms of comprehension, and also almost certainly in terms of importance.

Most prominently, what about C P Snow's "The Two Cultures" which lamented the rift between science and the humanities? You want to see a classic example of this rift? WItness the BBC list! Snow would have nodded his head vigorously, especially and most ironically because the exclusion of his own volume from the list makes his point resoundingly clear.

So, dear BBC, if I were to draw up my own short and admittedly limited list of scientific works that surely deserve as much of a place in the "educated" man's mind as the august books you present, I would cite the following. I haven't read all of these works; but with all I have a passing familiarity and some I have read more seriously. Let's even forget Newton's "Principia" for now and focus on the last 200 years as the BBC mostly has, and even just on the 20th century. Of course some of the following are more important than others; some are popular treatments while others are defining and fundamental volumes for their respective fields. But one can still come up with a highly readable list, which in my opinion would enrich the mind of any human being.

1. The Origin of Species- Charles Darwin

2. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions- Thomas Kuhn

3. The Logic of Scientific Discovery- Karl Popper

4. Silent Spring- Rachel Carson

5. Science and the Common Understanding- J. Robert Oppenheimer

6. Principia Mathematica- Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead

7. Physics and Philosophy- Werner Heisenberg

8. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions- Edwin Abbott

9. On Growth and Form- D'Arcy Thompson

10. What is Life?- Erwin Schrodinger

11. Men of Mathematics- E T Bell

12. Microbe Hunters- Paul De Kruif

13. The Mismeasure of Man- Stephen Jay Gould

14. The Selfish Gene- Richard Dawkins

15. Sociobiology- E O Wilson

16. Mr. Tompkins- George Gamow

17. The Double Helix- James Watson

18. The Nature of the Chemical Bond- Linus Pauling

19. Chaos- James Gleick

20. Advice to a Young Scientist- Peter Medawar

and finally

21. The Two Cultures- C P Snow

Consider the diverse and varying importance of these works. Kuhn and Popper are defining volumes in the philosophy of science. Darwin needs no explanation. Schrodinger inspired a generation of physicists like Francis Crick to change fields and initiate a revolution in biology. E O Wilson's book started a fierce chapter in the "nature vs nurture" debate whose ramifications can still be felt. In one fell swoop Gould demolished the foundations of scientific racism and eugenics. Pauling's book is one of the most important scientific works of all time and redefined chemistry. D'Arcy Thompson's beautiful volume established the mathematical foundations of developmental biology. Bell and De Kruif both inspired dozens of famous scientists like Andrew Weil and John Nash who went on to do groundbreaking work and win Fields and Nobel medals. Russell's book was a landmark event designed to provide a foundation for all of mathematics. Watson's book is considered the archetype of how real science is done, warts and all. Carson became the godmother of the modern environmental movement. On a more limited but important level, Gleick, Gamow and Dawkins made chaos theory, quantum physics and selfish genes comprehensible to the layman. And Medawar, Oppenheimer and Snow wrote deeply thoughtful volumes on the relationship between science, society and culture.

Now I suppose it would not be too presumptuous to ask the question; how many of these have the BBC list-makers read?

The impressive chemistry knowledge of talk-show hosts

I got this from Philip Ball's blog. Jeremy Paxman is a talk-show host in the UK. Apparently he has some quiz session where invariably a few science questions creep in. This is how the intrepid host tackles chemistry questions:

Paxman: “Which hydrated ferrous salt was once known as green vitriol?”
Student: “Iron sulphate.”
Paxman: “No, it’s just sulphate.”

Score one for the need to enroll talk-show hosts in science class, or maybe just a class in reasonableness.