On Chemistry Jobs 2016

If you read the comments on the Chemistry Faculty Jobs 2016 list at ChemBark you probably feel the same way. The job market for 2016 is worse than a Minecraft first night in hardcore mode. Especially the comment by an anonymous contributor from industry R&D lays it out clearly.

For those of the unlucky ones, I want to say it's not entirely your fault. I am not saying this just to comfort you, it is the truth. There are a lot of factors for evaluating a candidate: pedigree, pubs, letters, fit to the open position, research plan, teaching background, nationality, gender, race, and even religion. As much as we want to believe discrimination doesn't occur, it does. It is in human nature. Maybe declaring it a crime is a good deterrent but I'm yet to hear a counter-action on those grounds.

So, most of the factors that lead to getting hired are not in your hands. I'm sure you know what to do now but here're a few more suggestions:

1. Try to change the factors that can positively affect your marketability: Apart from the "do more work and get high impact journal paper" thing, what you can do is to get a scholarship or a grant for your work. There are so many opportunities for small funding to do a few things. Many agencies, companies or even countries are looking for a fresh scientist to show off on their pages.

2. Go out of your comfort zone and entertain options that you didn't think viable: Even though you always wanted to be a professor (or a scientist at an industrial R&D), check whether an hedge fund analyst job would be attractive. Or a patent lawyer assistant. And think about moving to another state, the world is bigger than California. And I'd say, go beyond borders. Developing countries are craving for scientists like you as they want talented people.

3. Set priorities for near term and long term, SEPARATELY: Life is changing everyday, so should you. Your priorities has changed and will change, and your plans should fit accordingly. Don't think your next job will bury you nearby. People hang on to jobs for 4.6 years and marriages 12+. This means you probably will change jobs at least 2-3 times in your married life.

4. The best advice I got for choosing the right place: Go to a school (or company) where they're happy to have you, not you're happy to get the job.

Academus Tyrannus

Training for a scientist includes objective evaluation of results, making sound discoveries and proving ideas to turn them into named theories. If you earned a Ph. D. you have mastered all that. Ideally.

A nice side benefit of scientific profession is to become an honest, objective person who promotes equality, and ultimately democracy. In less democratic countries, therefore, we can say that either academics are not part of the ruling class or they are not true scientists. But this can be true for the democracy role models as well. Here's why.

Being a president of a country is perhaps equal to being the person having the highest position of influence. Same can be said for any institution, department or laboratory. A lifetime presidency normally means dictatorship in democracies and tyranny at its worst. But then why scientists, who normally are almost always liberal in real life politics, occupy positions of influence a lot longer than they should, in not so few cases, for a lifetime? Think about journal editors, funding managers, department chairs, and higher up positions at academic foundations. They usually don't give up influence even if they leave the posts, putting their successors in key places. 

I'd normally not care, but these people are staunchly supportive of civic liberties, equal opportunities or democracies and usually are extremely concerned when a minor breach of human rights happens around the world. I'm not saying they shouldn't, but it is outright hypocrisy when you don't clean up your house before calling someone else dirty.

There I said it. And this has nothing to do with the rejection of my most recent paper.

Extreme mobility for academics by Apple hardware and Google software

What I will tell you changed my life irreversibly. And yes, I'm a chemist, who constantly reads and writes journal articles.

We the academics like brevity, so, here is the secret:

Hardware: Apple's iMac and iPhone 

Software: Google Drive, Docs, Gmail

Why Apple hardware?

Who is the smartest?

Academia suffers from superiority wars, despite the denial. This is not news for humanity, since we've been at each other's throats for physical domination and more recently the richness, thanks to capitalism. 

Academics want to be "better" than each other by being more smart, having more publications, better positions with prize decorated walls, and many more ways one can make himself or herself distinctively superior.

Why can't we just be down to earth, caring about each other and not laugh to another when we see them fall/fail or just misspell?

Nobel prize in Chemistry 2014

I used to predict the Nobel prize in Chemistry on my nano-blog, Nanotella.com. This year, I wasn't going to guess anything as the Chemistry prize became Biochemistry prize recently. But then Thompson Reuters announced the citation laurates, in which my postdoc advisor Galen Stucky and his former pdoc Peidong Yang are listed. Also, Ryong Ryoo of where I work, was suggested to share the chemistry prize. What an interesting turnabout. Let's cross the fingers.

America's coal dilemma

Just like Clinton (who didn't sign the Kyoto protocol to cut down the CO2 emissions) Obama is now under pressure to wage war against coal. This dirtiest fossil fuel is the prime target for CO2 cutting pledges and while showing off their enthusiasm on TV, all American presidents (and administrations) feared of strong repercussions from coal industry. The famous example is Al Gore, who had the power to cut the emissions (and didn't), and yet came out to be a climate change champion (once he lost all his powers). Sincerity is hard to be found in politicians.

This time the issue is about the coal mine in Somerset Colorado, whether or not to extend the ban of producing coal into a permanent one. History will repeat once again and Obama will find himself in the same dilemma of the other presidents - not being brave enough to stop the coal industry. 

Journals for sale

It seems like you can make money in trading your already esteemed journal. But how do you know the new owners will treat your baby the same way you did? The journal named experimental clinical cardiology switched hands to unknown, un-everything people who are willing "to publish anything for $1,200". Beware.