I was skimming through the October 7th issue of The Economist this morning, and after my jaunt through the letters page and the leaders, I skipped to the science and technology section as I usually do. There’s an article in there about the recent Nobel Prizes and I’d like to share this quote with you:
The chemistry prize is for a piece of X-ray crystallography, a favourite subject of the academy’s prize committees over the decades, and a way of awarding an extra physiology prize (since x-ray crystallography is used mainly to examine large biological molecules) without confessing that much of the intellectual oomph has gone out of chemistry in the century since Alfred Nobel, himself a chemist, drew up his will.
The piece doesn’t have a name to it, but it was obviously written by someone who has little or no background in chemistry. If you ask me, the parenthetical statement about what x-ray crystallography is mainly used for is utter nonsense. Not only that, but later in the article we are told that the chemical difference between DNA and RNA is that one of the bases is different… now, remind me, why does one have a ‘D’ at the front and the other an ‘R’ – hmm, I wonder?
If someone is going to tell me that chemistry is losing its intellectual oomph, they should know a little bit about it first…
Stuart
Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)
Although some mistakes, but this sentence seems to call for attentions back to the hard-core chemistry, and it uses words that are more aggresive than chemist bloggers.
Couldn’t agree more, stuart – i had exactly the same reaction when i read the Economist piece. It’s interesting to note that the Cambridge Structural Database has more than 366,000 X-ray structures of small organic and organometallic molecules, while the Protein Data Bank currently has 39,323 structures …
Chemistry is an empirical art. Discrete goals imply discrete failures. Studies are always successful and forever demand further funding. Professional management secures sinecure performance bonuses from studies or, in the feared case of real world productivity, a least publishable bit.
Chemistry is increasingly unfundable by casebook examples for unquantifiable risks. Biology can study gormless forever. Grant funding management votes for gormless. Consider the Department of Education and Head Start at the inception.
What does this “oomph” mean anyway? After all, where would nanoscience and technology be without chemists? It is true that X-ray crystallography is used less and less in favor of electron diffraction but if the Nobel committee used this as a criterion, no one in the nano world can aspire for a prize…
Stuart, entertainers comment on politics all of the time. Athletes do the same. Why does someone need to proficient in their subject? all they need to have is a voice, a platform, and an audience and anyone can talk about anything they want. ( I am being facious of course, i completely agree with you)