What makes a good chemist?

Bibiana Campos Seijo, editor

Chemistry World, Email: Chemistry World

I was listening to a programme on the radio a few days ago (BBC4, you'll be glad to hear) about the banking crisis in the UK. During one of the sections of the programme the presenter asked the interviewee: 'in your opinion, what makes a good banker?' The interviewee struggled to answer the question so the presenter changed tack and asked instead 'what makes a bad banker?' Funnily enough, the interviewee was not short for an answer then.

Obviously, we are in the middle of a global financial crisis so we can all agreethat at this point in time it is probably easier to describe a bad banker than a good one. It's a pity, however, that one's job should be defined by what you do wrong and not by what you do right. So I wondered: how would we chemists fare if the question had been about us? Chemistry and chemical are terms that, on occasion, have had a bad press and for some carry a certain negative connotation, but I refuse to follow the presenter's line of reasoning and define what makes a good chemist by first defining what makes a bad chemist. I definitely want my discipline to be defined by what is good about it. So the question for me is: what makes a good chemist?

Excellence in problem solving and a mind for analytical detail are attributes that immediately spring to mind, together with a good degree of tenacity and perseverance; indeed, anybody who has spent any time in the lab completing a research project or a PhD should have these in spades. Being open is another vital characteristic that a chemist must exhibit; and by this I mean open to share one's ideas and knowledge with others but also, and this is very different, open to ideas from others. Loving what you do, working well as part of a team, and following government and industry regulations are also important. An attribute that is becoming increasingly relevant is the ability to communicate: chemists need to be able to articulate their knowledge and thought processes and impart them to others. Writing papers, proposals and bids; giving presentations and lectures; attending congresses and networking with colleagues are all essential parts of the job these days so good oral and written communication skills are now vital.

Interestingly, many of the attributes I've mentioned are not exclusive to chemists; they are common to all good scientists. So I wondered: is there an attribute that is unique to us? I found some of the information I discovered doing a quick Google search quite baffling. To give you an example, one website said that, besides many other qualities, some of which I have already mentioned, a chemist must be humble. Why should a chemist - as opposed to a physicist or a biologist, or an artist, a lawyer or a politician for that matter - be humble? Others amused me. One site suggested that a good chemist must be 'aware of the limitations of science'. Patronising or what? The most satisfactory answer for me in terms of that exclusive attribute is around the reproducibility of results. A good chemist should be good at replicating other people's results and equally their results should be easily replicated by anyone else. 

But can I challenge you to define in 140 characters (it's the digital age after all) what, in your opinion, makes a good chemist? Tweet us @ChemistryWorld or email chemistryworld. 

I fear 140 characters simply won't be enough...

Bibiana Campos Seijo, editor

Chemistry World 
Email: Chemistry World

International Collaboration in Science

Anant Marahatta, Doctoral Student (Chemistry)
Tohoku University, Japan
(ananta037@gmail.com)
(Relevant to my collaboration with Germany)
The general meaning of an “international collaboration in science” is explained by these advanced words: global science, global networks, global co-authorships, global interaction, global conference, global sharing, and spreading global hand for helping on different disciplines of science and technologies etc.

Though there is no political institution organizing the sciences on an international level, a self-organized, global network had formed in the late 20th century. It has been found that international collaborations are being doubled from 1990 to 2005. While collaborative authorships within nations have also risen.

This is the century of getting revolution in the world due to the different fields of sciences. If the researchers and scientists of any well developed countries have proudly announced that they are eligible enough to carry out any sorts of revolutionary changes in the field of science, they have initiated to deteriorate their countries themselves. So for getting several supports and ideas, all the countries if possible must be the member of the international collaboration. Any one can analyze that, international collaboration improves all the countries of the world by applying a range of tools including social network analysis and factor analysis, to expose the network.

There has been a rapidly growing literature discussing the increase in international linkages in science. Authors have been approaching the questions from three perspectives: 1) scientific analysis of the increase in the interconnectedness. 2) Social sciences analysis of collaboration in general and international linkages in particular and 3) policy analysis of the implications of linkages for funding and outcomes. The increase in investment in research and development from governments and non-governmental organizations (such as the World Bank) is for using science as a tool to aid development and for contributing to the diffusion of capacity into the collaborating countries. Scientific collaboration may lead to a range of outcomes such as publication of co-authored articles is one of these outputs.

Collaboration in the technology sector refers to a wide variety of tools that enable groups of people to work together. Collaboration encompasses both asynchronous and synchronous methods of communication and serves as an umbrella-term for a wide variety of software packages. Perhaps the most commonly associated form of synchronous collaboration is web conference using tools such as WebEX or Microsoft Live Meeting but the term can easily be applied to instant messaging as well.

According to the available information, at the global level, the network of interactions is shown to be very strong and highly interconnected. Above figure illustrates the association of all the countries of the world in 2000. The main point is that science is a highly interconnected network, with a dense core and a number of periphery countries.

Thus international collaboration seems one of the important tools for making revolutionary change in the world by developing and introducing the multidisciplinary fields.