Chemistry’s not boring, you’re boring
‘All science is either physics or stamp collecting.’ Ernest Rutherford didn’t have a high opinion of chemistry. Famously, he was never impressed that he won the Nobel prize in such a lowly discipline. For the man who gave us the proton, those lab benches just weren’t sexy enough.
It’s a problem that persists. Last month, a survey of 186 industry professionals by Elsevier’s Reaxys found 78% of chemists felt that the discipline was unattractive because it didn’t make headlines. Similar numbers reported difficulty hiring new staff or bemoaned the discipline’s obsession with applied science as a major turn-off.
It’s all an illusion, of course. The daily work of any other scientist is beset by an equal level of mundanity to that of your average chemist. But chemistry holds the unenviable position of being viewed as ‘that required technical fiddly bit’. And too few try to dispel that myth.
For decades, chemistry communication has been on a crash course to mediocrity, afraid to take risks or say something important. It has fallen back on parlour tricks: a razzle-dazzle of goop, fire and explosions. A moment’s ‘squeaky pop’ grabs attention but doesn’t kindle a lifelong passion while someone else is offering you the stars. Wonder – that magic ingredient to spark a lifetime’s interest – is absent. Without real-world context (and I don’t mean a hailstorm of equations) any demonstration is meaningless.
Missing, too, are tales of heroes, villains and eccentrics. We don’t share them enough. Instead, chemistry chat obsesses over minutiae. The general public doesn’t care if a picture has left or right-handed DNA, and pointing out such flaws is often the scientific equivalent of correcting someone’s grammar; all it does is drive people away.
All of this is an easy fix. Chemistry just has to be more ambitious, ditch gimmicks and show how amazing its world can truly be: a world of nanocars, of crystalline intricacy, of giant magnets and frickin’ laser beams. We need to show and explain, not show and tell. There are discoveries that could make headlines: we have to use them, rather than boring an audience to sleep with calculus. Until then, Rutherford is right: we’re just stamp collecting.
Update: your response, 31 October 2017
Following the publication of this comment, we’ve had lots of response through social media, both agreeing and disagreeing with the article.
Of course, there are many good examples of science communication in chemistry. The article was never intended to be a blanket commentary on all efforts, but to highlight that where chemistry’s efforts to engage the public can be focused on a performance aspect, such as demonstrating a reaction, biology and physics communication is more focused on the wider picture. There is a recognised shortfall in chemists coming through (particularly in disciplines such as radiochemistry), and we need to ask ourselves why.
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