Blog Archive » The Heavy Reliance of Chemical Academia on Opinion. Since the last post, several other chemistry bloggers have weighed in on Professor Murray’s editorial in Anal. Chem. (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). The feedback has been almost universally negative, which you would probably expect given that: i) these are responses from bloggers and blog commenters, and ii) the arguments in the editorial were neither substantiated nor well reasoned. What makes Murray’s editorial especially troubling has as much to do with its source as its content. The thoughts of respected professors are routinely solicited for such important decisions as accepting papers for publication, assigning grades in classes, funding grants, and hiring young scientists for faculty positions.
It’s a little bit disconcerting to think about how much weight our field seems to place in the opinions of small sets of scientists. The thing is, I’m not sure that there’s a better system. Over time, I’d like to see more open forms of assessment enter the picture. Useful Chemistry. Terra Sigillata. A Look At Legal Highs | Synchronium. Recently, there have been a few nasty developments in the world of legal highs. I was contacted by this week by GMTV and Radio 5 Live, asking for an interview about the “new” legal high Ivory Wave causing a stir. Unfortunately, I couldn’t give any interviews for various boring reasons and could only give a bit of advice over the phone/email, so I thought I’d write a post about it now I’ve got the time.
Also, The UK’s old friend JWH-018 seems to be causing some trouble over the pond, having been linked a couple of deaths in Indiana. Finally, our government have made some more noise about the “problem” of legal highs which makes no difference for a good year or so and will only make matters worse when they manage to cobble some new legislation together eventually. Ivory Wave Ivory Wave has been around for at least a year, and before that, it was called Vanilla Sky.
Guess what? That doesn’t appear to be the case. At first glance, it looks like we can ignore the first one. A Chemical Free Rant - chemistry - Chemical free chemical free honey chemical free shampoo chemical free sunscreen Cul de Sac titanium dioxide - Speakeasy Science.