Ramblings: December 2021
4 January 2022
Here are some collected Twitter ramblings from December 2021. Image of the month: Targeted Protein Degradation, as visualized by Wombo Art:
This is a big disconnect that I often see between academic labs and industrial labs. We simply aren’t going to dedicate the time to a 10-step catalyst synthesis unless there’s a damn good reason for doing so. A number of academic labs (Phil Baran’s comes to mind) have gotten pretty good at forming partnerships with industry to solve synthetic problems in a way that will translate to the reality of the industrial world. That’s not to say that I think all synthetic organic labs need to do that — in the long run, we’re better served by pushing the boundaries of what’s synthetically possible with no immediate eye toward industrial application. Just don’t get mad at me when I refuse to immediately pick up your new chemistry. We run all those Suzuki couplings and reductive aminations for a reason, and it’s not because we’re stupid or narrow-minded. Loving your chemistry and wanting to/being able to use it are two different things.
Did we really need an article to tell us this? Ten minutes of reading #ChemTwitter could have told you the same thing. A thousand anecdotes starts to become data. I often get the sense that academia looks at industry with a certain level of disdain, like all of us over here are the lesser scientific mortals who have “failed” or “sold out” in some way. When almost none of the people in academia have had sufficient interaction with folks in industry, what our values are (hint: not their “publish or perish” mindset, for sure!), etc. to have formed that kind of conclusion. My DMs are open to anyone who is curious about life after academia, but has either been told nothing or perhaps outright lied to by the people inside the walls of academia. We fear what we don’t understand. Let’s break those barriers down and have a dialogue in an environment of mutual respect and understanding.
I have an entire presentation that I’ve given at a university lecture on what I call “medicinal chemistry operations” that goes way deep on this topic. I’m a big believer in university outreach, and my DMs are open for that sort of thing too if you’re interested in having me come give a lecture or participate in a roundtable at your university.
This was fun, and I’ll do it again some quiet Friday night. Questions were varied and thoughtful all around.
I try not to be too overtly political on my account, but c’mon. This isn’t politics. It’s basic science and common sense. The worst part is, I think most of these folks spreading disinformation know better. But it’s easier to run the grift by telling the marks what they want to hear.
Wombo Art made the rounds, and I dutifully played along. This looks more like DNA getting ripped apart to me, but it’s certainly evocative. I also confess to spending way longer playing with this renderer to get an image that I liked than I want to admit.
A shame.
Never trust a chemist who can’t cook. This recipe was a hit and I actually made it again before the end of the year due to popular demand. It’s the time of year around here for a spicy, stew-y kind of dish, and this fit the bill wonderfully.
I cannot stress enough how getting outdoors and going hiking has helped me keep my sanity during the last 2 years of a global pandemic. I’m still working from home full-time, and there are many weeks where I barely leave the house Monday-Friday. When Saturday rolls around, I’m ready for fresh air and open spaces. We’re blessed in Connecticut to have an abundance of hiking trails.
Measure twice, cut once, as the saying goes. If I had a dollar for every time a pharma company I’ve worked for has double-checked the biology in a single lab’s paper(s) and found that it didn’t check out… I’d have more than a few dollars. The biology literature is notoriously irreproducible, and any pharma company that wants to live will check the findings in its own hands. Starting projects in earnest without doing that kind of work in advance is folly.
If GIFs help to reach an audience and enliven some otherwise plodding subject matter, I’m on board. Anything to make the teaching stick is a win.
Dear God. Volumes could be written about all of the truly terrible work that’s been done over the last two years aimed at COVID drug repurposing, screening (virtual or otherwise), etc. Bob and Ingo Hartung and Aled Edwards have been calling this stuff out left and right. It turns out that drug discovery is actually really hard and that half-assing it as most of these low quality publications have done is not going to work. Drug discovery is a ridiculously interdisciplinary endeavor which requires complete focus and a lot of money to do properly. I understand the desire to appear helpful in the face of so much suffering in a global pandemic… but please, just stop most of this nonsense. It’s not helping anyone and just polluting the literature with poor science. There’s a reason we have an industry that does this for a living.
Academia could maybe take a few notes from us industry folks on this one. Good leader =/= good scientist, forever and always. Regardless of your role in science, please take the time to learn to be a good leader. I promise it’s just a skill and there are resources out there to help you learn it just like any other skill.
This quantification of the ongoing lack of diversity in medicinal chemistry makes me sad and angry. Particularly because I think, if anything, their methodology probably overstates the limited degree of progress we’ve made on diversity in the field. It’s still a very cis-het-white male business. It’s changing, but too slowly.
Hoo boy. Chemjobber and Derek Lowe and a host of others jumped all over Eric Topol for trying to turn the industrial manufacture of Paxlovid into a widget factory. Bad takes like this are all over the place from people who don’t understand a lick of process chemistry or industrial manufacturing. One thing Twitter is good for is letting people know when you’ve overstepped the bounds of your expertise. (I stopped following Nate Silver this year because he’s just become insufferable in his inability to stay in his lane.) To his credit, Topol walked it back the next day after a torrent of criticism.
God. Why can people not just let this go? It resurfaces on a regular basis like the tides or the lunar cycle. I choose not to use “Dr.” or “, Ph.D.” as part of my name on Twitter, but the point is, I could if I wanted to, and it’s totally appropriate for others who do. Particularly for all the LGBTQ, women, Black, and other folks out there who are not cis-het white men and are routinely denigrated as if they did not have a doctorate. Enough already.
I really hope Jeff decides to run with this. Twitter could use a whole series of process chemistry tweetorials.
It’s Christmas. We drank. A lot.
This is (imo) the most exciting thing NASA has done in a generation for space science. Really stoked to see the images start coming back in mid-2022!
It’s a Christmas movie. Twitter has spoken.
I’ve trotted this post about pharmacokinetic characterization out so many times now. I’m on the verge of making myself a nuisance by starting to tag this post onto every paper I link to that fails to do so, until the message starts to sink it. Probably won’t win many friends doing it though.
Was thrilled to learn that Scotland has named their plows, and that you can track them too! Connecticut has some catching up to do.
Twitter moves fast and shifts its attention faster, and I’m here to meme it. So much criticism was piling on to the “That’s Not Chiral” account for calling out hash & wedge representations of things that were never intended to represent chirality… and then the CDC went and stepped in it with their new 5 day quarantine requirement, with no need to test out of quarantine with even a negative LFT. All of science Twitter went bananas.
There are still signficant systemic problems in industrial (and other) hiring practices. It’s too big of a problem for me to fix by myself - I’m just one person. But I can tell you how I do things in my corner of the universe, how I think it’s benefited our group, hold up examples of good hiring practice, and call out examples of bad hiring practice. We change this one person at a time!
I could (and probably will, at some point) do a whole set of posts / tweetorials about making the transition from academia to industry, including how to land a job. The expectations are often not clear to potential candidates, especially when they’re just coming out of academia. Because few people in that world, usually including the candidate’s advisor or mentors, understands the expectations either - so there’s nobody to provide guidance. Industry hiring is not like interviewing for a faculty position.