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Chemists Invent Drugs and Drugs Save Lives
- pomian 2y agoWhat a great story. Chemistry truly is an unappreciated science. Another field where it is essential in studying, learning, fixing - environmental issues. There at many biologists, and ecologists, but few chemists. We need them in governments which form regulatory bodies, engineers for the industry, and chemists in the lab. Water, soil, and air chemistry are essential disciplines, and exciting. The world is complex. We need more teachers that understand the need and use for chemistry - which would lead to a more educated population that could understand the world around them, better.
- selimthegrim 2y agoI wish the market listened to you.
- eru 2y agoWhy? People who studied chemistry typically have access to high paying jobs. So the market agrees that chemistry is great and useful.
- bdrencher 2y agoI think this is true for chemists with a lot of experience, but starting out in the field is brutal for most. Finishing your undergrad and realizing the most you can make is around $35k/year doing basic lab rat work is tough. The only other options are to go to grad school or leave the field entirely. The grad school route offers another 4 to 6 years of low pay and then possibly having to go through a post doc to ultimately land a job paying 80-100k/year. Tack on the student loan debt (from undergrad) and it paints a bleak picture. Background: I studied chemistry as an undergrad and started a PhD after an internship at Merck. I couldn't see how I could support my family long term so I switched to tech.
- kragen 2y agothe idea that chemistry is not part of tech is a big part of the problem
- bdrencher 2y agoI agree! When I started my PhD I wanted to use software to help sift through the ocean of research papers and pair that with micro fluidics to create a way to quickly determine the validity of novel reactions. None of the professors were interested in working with me on something like that.
- kragen 2y agoi didn't mean 'the idea that chemistry is not part of software' 'tech' is short for 'technology' in the oed's sense 1b, 'practical arts collectively', for which their first citation is from 01859, referring to, as it happens, chemistry; specifically, the formulation of varnishes for wood https://archive.org/details/oed9barch/page/n548/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/oed9barch/page/n548/mode/1up possibly also the second half of their sense 1a, '... the scientific study of the practical or industrial arts,' for which i think the first citation is from bentham in 01802–12 obviously in the 19th century they weren't talking about software your idea is good though i hope you do it
- Ekaros 2y agoIt is not. Chemistry is just a special sub-field of manufacturing. Nearly all manufacturing uses chemistry in some way. But in general manufacturing has nowhere near margins of "tech".
- kragen 2y agoif you are starting from the assumption that drug development and other such research chemistry is 'just a special subfield of manufacturing' then obviously you are not going to come to any sensible conclusions, and i am sure your errors are widespread
- jyunwai 2y agoA software developer who earned a Bachelor's in chemistry once told me that he didn't find that the pay in chemistry was worthwhile considering the expertise and training involved. He said that the most available job for chemical research for someone with a Bachelor's was as a lab technician, which roughly earns about $40,000 USD a year: not bad, but far below an engineering or computer science graduate, despite the comparable difficulty for completing the degree. For chemists who complete a doctorate, a brief search shows that a PhD graduate (after 4–7+ years of low pay as a graduate student after a Bachelor's) can plausibly earn about $125,000 USD with some luck as a starting salary as a scientist in industry. A Master's graduate can likely earn close to that. But I've heard that the job market is tougher for research positions—a fair number of people switch into other fields such as medical device sales and sales engineering (with eye-wateringly large salaries of plausibly greater than $400,000 USD a year from what I've heard), data science, or software. But careers aren't only about the money, though. It sounds like the author of the submitted article has lived a fulfilling life without a primary focus on salary, and it certainly looks like people who enjoy chemistry research won't struggle financially for their efforts. However, there's still a salary gap, especially at the level of a Bachelor's: it looks clear that other fields pay a lot more for similar amounts of effort. Note that I lack personal experience in this field, though—people who have gone through this path likely have better, more specific insights about the career.
- trimethylpurine 2y agoIn the US, chemistry is a very saturated field. There are nearly twice as many graduates as job openings each year. Starting pay averages are on par with a grocery store cashier.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- eru 2y agoInteresting. And https://www.acs.org/education/policies/acs-approval-program/data-reports.html https://www.acs.org/education/policies/acs-approval-program/... also says that chemistry has about equal numbers of men and women graduating. Other stem fields that pay more, tend to have more men. (I will not speculate about causes. I'm only noticing a correlation.)
- trimethylpurine 2y agoSure, I suppose you might say that if a field is welcoming to more workers then it's more likely to become saturated. I'm not sure if that's where you're going but, it makes some sense. That said, I think it's more likely that loan incentives for STEM majors have steered too many people into job skills that aren't in demand because education and education policy both lag far behind industry. Policy making is almost always slower than economic flux by an exponential margin. That's why capitalism works for decades and centuries longer than other more policy dependent economic systems. Oh well... The beauty of life is you can change your mind and make a career in anything you can figure out. Well, unless you are already carrying $50k in student debt that can't be dismissed through bankruptcy, like many chem grads are in the US. We can thank the government for helping us decide on a STEM degree. Some will argue that we signed up for it, so we should have to pay it. But, that makes no sense. The FTC is there to protect consumers who get sold on bad loans and false claims of benefits. Who is protecting students? I think that's the bigger issue, if we're talking about chemistry in the US.
- choilive 2y agoNo, they generally do not.
- eesmith 2y agoPerhaps we need a big promotional campaign. Oh! What about "Better Things for Better Living...Through Chemistry", or more simply, "Better Living Through Chemistry"? We can promote how great DDT is at getting rid of bugs, how PCBs make an excellent transformer oil, chromium(VI) as an anti-corrosion additive, that neat use of tetraethyllead (let's just agree to call it "ethyl", ok?) for engine knock, CFCs for cooling and fire suppresion - why, the list goes on and on. Rachel Carson? Never heard of her. Superfund? Sorry, I don't read comics.
- aa-jv 2y agoChemists also enslave people with drugs. There's not an addictive substance out there that wasn't created by a chemist for the purpose. This "noble scientist" narrative is dangerous. It implies that technically/scientifically competent individuals are 'good guys', when this is simply not the case.
- defrost 2y agoAlcohol abuse predates Alchemy, alcohol regularly makes "most addictive substances" lists. Elephants get drunk on alchol w/out the intervention of a chemist, just plain old natural fermentation. I understand your point, but there is that one blindingly obvious screaming exception that's a, ahh, elephant in the room.
- aa-jv 2y agoWhoever discovered alcohol was the first chemist. Whoever got drunk on it, the first addict. They could be the same.
- defrost 2y ago> Whoever discovered alcohol was the first chemist. How does drinking|eating naturally fermented fruit or grains make someone a chemist? You understand that elephants "discovered" alcohol also, does that make elephants chemists? Even recreating the natural process on demand later on barely rates as "chemistry" given the lack of any need to understand the process.
- vibrio 2y agoI think the point of that reply was that There was no “one moment” alcohol and drunkenness was discovered. It’s been there since fermentation and cognition evolved-before any intent was possible.
- LM358 2y agoOpium, cannabis et. al. would like a word with you...
- ugh123 2y agoand doctors/hospitalists continue to receive all the glory and high pay checks...
- renewiltord 2y agoWell, they unionized and cut off access to their field. The rest of us have to pay a lot, but their union is probably the most successful labour union.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoI would say police unions are the most successful. Doctors’ are currently being assailed by much larger counterparties (government, managed care organizations) and utilizing nurse practitioners and physician assistants to reduce their market power, hence more and more doctors becoming W-2 employees.
- jyunwai 2y agoChemistry has been uniquely difficult as a subject to study in my view. You need to be good at all of memorization, problem-solving with theory, and laboratory experiment: it's difficult to succeed with a weakness in any one of these. Though one could technically try to be a computational chemist for people who didn't enjoy the experimental work, you'd still have to go through a lot of labwork as a student. I have a special respect for people who've succeeded as chemists as a result. Also, as a side note of personal curiosity that's on a bit of a tangent in case anyone with experience in chemistry is reading this: I heard an anecdote about improving results in teaching labs once that I've thought about from time to time, but I'm not sure if it's credible. A chemistry undergraduate was running experiments at a teaching lab, when he decided to go the extra mile and look up how to calibrate his equipment. He then calibrated his equipment carefully before running the rest of his experiments each time that semester. His experimental results were so consistently close to the theoretical results, that he was accused of falsifying data by his instructor (though ultimately, he didn't receive any penalties). Would this be plausible, or a tall tale? I was always wondering since then, if taking the time to calibrate all of one's tools before an experiment could have such a big impact for experimenters—or alternatively, if the student actually was manipulating the data. But then again, maybe this was some kind of statistical fluke, and he attributed the randomness to his calibrations.
- PlasmonOwl 2y agoYou are completely right. I am a chemist and this isn’t a self indulgent rant but there are those who “get” chemistry and those who don’t. We can teach and train a chemist to work in a lab - but one who groks it? Difficult to create. Sadly, there are scant opportunities for glory in chemistry. Salaries are usually low, issues with mental health are rampant, and it’s generally a career of high suffering. (For a white collar role) Many of us regret our choice, because we all feel like Walter White, funnily enough. Talented, but little to show for it. Most of us don’t start cooking though
- pjerem 2y agoYeah, that’s it. I didn’t "get" chemistry back in my school days and it was a real frustration because, well, of course I had bad grades but what saddened me were that I still found the topic to be very interesting and I loved physics, which I was pretty good at and I could see how the two were magically interconnected. But I failed to grasp the "logic" behind the system. That’s truly one of my regrets because chemistry is probably one of the most important fundamental science for humanity’s future. But that’s ok, I love computer science too and I did "get" it (mostly). Thanks for the awesome semiconductors, chemists !
- kragen 2y agothis is profoundly moving too bad chemistry has been criminalized except for 'professionals' https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/a-requiem-for-amateur-chemistry https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/a-requiem-for-amateur-chemist... what kind of people will persist at getting into programming once you can be arrested for possessing a debugger or compiler without an exploit developer's license? kids who were never allowed to program anything until they got into college? that's how we're losing potential chemists today a lot more lives could have been saved with better drugs i'm not convinced that dementia can be solved with a drug, but chemistry is how we understand the processes that cause dementia
- RCitronsBroker 2y agothat hits close to home. I had a search warrant executed on me after ordering small amounts of very ordinary lab chemicals that MAY be used for some more nefarious purposes as a Teen. It’s what pretty much killed my passion for chemistry, i was admitted to undergraduate chemistry instead of my remaining years of high school thru a program offered here in Germany and stopped after my parents, somewhat pre-disposed to such things due to being afghan immigrants during the war on terror, ceased supporting me in my pursuits. I’m working on my biochemistry dissertation now, but "only" to get my German MD-ish (Dr. med.) and still regret it sometimes.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jagaerglad 2y agothis hits close to home for me as well, was very into chemistry as a kid and wanted to do various experiments but no chemical whatsoever was possible to get hands on. Never got past the baking powder in water and trying to create hydrogen with water and a battery-phase
- greenish_shores 2y agoWith all the closed software being used, and crazy perception of software and network services in (especially) US law, sometimes it doesn't seem too far from the dystopian future of being "arrested for possessing a debugger or compiler without an exploit developer's license".
- shiroiushi 2y agoIs this about chemists (US), or chemists (UK)? The two are entirely different professions with very little in common.
- HPsquared 2y agoPretty sure chemistry researchers in the UK are also called chemists.
- shiroiushi 2y agoSo are the people you go to to fill your prescriptions.
- _Wintermute 2y agoColloquially, I would say the shop is called a chemists, but the person working there is a pharmacist.
- shiroiushi 2y agoI haven't actually lived in the UK, but from what I've read, the person working there is called a "chemist". However, that's (finally) changing and they're being called a "pharmacist" more and more. Apparently, the whole thing comes from a century or more ago when you'd go to this "chemist" shop to get anything related to chemicals, whether it was drugs, arsenic (to kill rats, or perhaps your spouse), developing chemicals for your camera film, or petrol for your motorcar. Like so many things, the British simply refused to change when newer, more modern ways came along, and they kept calling this place and person "chemist" even though the person had a degree in Pharmacology. Maybe one of these days, after they finally all call this place a "pharmacy", the UK will finally have sink faucets which actually mix hot and cold water like every other country on the planet, instead of having separate hot and cold ones.
- surfingdino 2y ago
- reify 2y ago[flagged]