Chemists Invent Drugs and Drugs Save Lives | Hacker News Reader

Chemists Invent Drugs and Drugs Save Lives

chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Chemistry 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.

You 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

Yeah, 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 !

The way chemistry is taught in schools isn't very logic in a lot of ways – it's based on heuristics. It's mostly some empirical rules, but if feels like you have more exceptions from those rules than real applications. The reasons are that 1) each molecule is a complex and complicated quantum mechanical system and 2) each observable unit of chemistry (one or more substances and their transitions in reactions or change of state) is a thermodynamic system with complex statistics. Highschoolers - not unlike alchemists - lack the math to describe these problems, so they are taught heuristics that are useful in understand a lot (but not all) everyday-chemistry.

Your phrase “logic behind the system” resonates with me. I loved and thrived in organic chemistry but it took hours and hours of sitting working through syntheses over and over-pulling books off library shelves looking for more examples. When things clicked it was beautiful. Many of my pre-med classmates were determined to memorize their way out of it, and I pleaded with them that it was impossible. It’s not list of parameters it is a way of thinking and more complex pattern recognition. They were likely busy with other pre-med stuff and had to allocate time elsewhere. I ended up pursuing microbiology/molecular biology as I didn’t have the financial runway to switch or expand majors at that point in my life, no regrets but I loved the logic of chemistry and probably could have led to some cool things had I done both.

> We can teach and train a chemist to work in a lab - but one who groks it?

This happens a lot in mature fields. Mechanics generally can't design cars. Doctors generally can't come up with drugs. IT staff can't generally write software. Pilots can't generally design aeroplanes. Homeowners can't generally build houses. The operator/builder split is real!

Aren't your examples also true about immature fields?

Very few doctors have every come up with drugs.

Few of the early pilots after the Wrights designed their own airplanes, but airplanes were certainly not mature by 1912.

When did home building change from an immature field to a mature one? I struggle to think of when most homeowners built houses.

Saying "IT staff can't generally write software" sounds like saying "sailors can't generally pilot a large vessel" - both are specialized abilities in a larger field.

> Saying "IT staff can't generally write software" sounds like saying "sailors can't generally pilot a large vessel" - both are specialized abilities in a larger field.

I'm not saying they aren't. That's why I said that there's a gap between build and operate.

It still has nothing to do with the maturity of the field.

How many astronauts could design a rocket that could get to space? I believe the answer is zero, irrespective of maturity.

> Salaries are usually low, issues with mental health are rampant, and it’s generally a career of high suffering. (For a white collar role)

Are you specifically referring to grad school and work in academia, or is this very location specific for people who've started their career? Because I know tons of chemists who went into industry after their Ph.D and they earn on the high side of overall STEM degrees.

Pharma, polymer producers, chemical bulk goods, petro, ... They all pay 6-figure salaries before mid-career. Of course it's not FAANG, but it's very comfortable.

So either my chemistry friends purposely got skills in grad school that transfer well into industry, or the German language region has unusually strong pharma/chemical industry.

I would say your last point. Chemical field is of extraordinarily high status in Germanic countries. Its like math for Francophones last century. (People learning the language for the field) Merkel? Angewandte Chemie? BASF? Not sure if that will last thanks to a lot of it based on fossil fuels.

I think many people are faced with a choice of studying physics or chemistry at a graduate level and, since up until then chemistry is generally much harder work than physics if you are an above average student, gravitate towards the subject where their ability so far has made life easy for them.

I still remember my introductory chemistry lecture at uni where the instructor said that a whole bunch of us had coasted up until now, and that in his experience those that had had to work hardest to get there, even if they had lower grades, would be the ones to succeed (he was right!)

I'm a little confused by your anecdote. High ability students who coast along gravitate towards physics, which is easier for them. But your professor said that the chemists had coasted?

This matches my experience studying chemistry after graduating from highschool with 0 effort. Studying chemistry is hard work in a lot of different fields: brute force memorization, understanding the intricacies of arcane heuristics with multiple (historically inspired) levels of "reasoning", applying lots of basic math and some higher math, applying some higher math in the context of more modern and somewhat less confusing models, and doing manual work in the lab with all kinds of equipment. It was a lot of fun, but I wasn't ready for the insane amount of work that I needed to put in. For comparisson, I've also done some courses in economics and business administration – 0 effort, just like basic school.

This heavily depends on the kind of experiments, especially the possible sources of error. Calibration can reduce most errors in physical chemistry where the measurements themselves are the usually the main part in the experiment. From my point of view, calibration of the devices should be part of the teaching lab – but equipment is often very old, so you don't calibrate the equipment itself, but rather try to measure some kind of error and clean up you data (theoretically, this is a calibration as well). If you the teaching lab was about synthesis, calibration of pipettes, scales etc. will reduce the error as well, but having a more precise stop watch doesn't make you a better runner: the result can still be influenced by non-calibratable things like the cleanliness of your flasks, the consistency of your heating device, the purity of your reactants, the speed with which you can perform certain working steps etc. – also, synthesis can involve quite some luck.

Calibration very often makes the most difference in analytical results.

This sounds like a pH meter scenario.

Where the instrument is subject to more drift because it is a community device, and undergrads doing identical experiments had never gotten very ideal results. The variation was accepted for "as good as it gets" and the powers that be were not prepared for an outlier that goes the extra mile for quality.

Sometimes the most important lesson is that readings which are assumed to be accurate enough to calculate consistency (but are not fully verified) can often have more inherent variation than dissimilar bench techniques.

What 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.

I wish the market listened to you.

Why? People who studied chemistry typically have access to high paying jobs. So the market agrees that chemistry is great and useful.

I 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.

the idea that chemistry is not part of tech is a big part of the problem

I 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.

i 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

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

It 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".

if 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

I suppose they think pharma is going to find their AI talent off the street and compete with MS, etc.

> the idea that chemistry is not part of tech is a big part of the problem

How so?

A 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.

In 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.

Interesting. And 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.)

Sure, 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.

No, they generally do not.

Perhaps 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.

Chemists 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.

Alcohol 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.

Whoever discovered alcohol was the first chemist. Whoever got drunk on it, the first addict. They could be the same.

> 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.

I 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.

Opium, cannabis et. al. would like a word with you...

this is profoundly moving

too bad chemistry has been criminalized except for 'professionals' 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

that 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.

this 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

With 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".

Is this about chemists (US), or chemists (UK)? The two are entirely different professions with very little in common.

Pretty sure chemistry researchers in the UK are also called chemists.

So are the people you go to to fill your prescriptions.

Colloquially, I would say the shop is called a chemists, but the person working there is a pharmacist.

I 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.

Dear sir, I live in London and I can assure you that we do have mixing taps. We keep installing separate ones for the amusement of the foreigners looking for the remnants of the British Empire.

In all seriousness, maybe this is some online meme or something, but I have read British people online defend the separate taps: something about the hot water being non-potable or something. Maybe it's only in older buildings?

It's a made-up media story. In the old days cold water came from the mains and hot water came from a storage tank in the loft where it could be contaminated and for that reason hot water was considered unsafe for drinking. Another reason was difference in pressure which could force water coming from one source into another.

UK building regulations being extra cautious. Like the fused power plugs.

The best power plugs in the world, sir.

I hope you're joking, because they're really not (partially because of their ridiculous size, but mostly because of the dumb fuses). The best power plugs are the (northern) European "schuko" plugs, although they're still a compromise. The idea of having separate fuses in each plug is ridiculous; any decent modern electrical system uses circuit breakers at a central point to protect whole circuits from overcurrent conditions.

Isn't Pharmacology a different degree from a Pharmacy degree?

Can be (and is) very confusing because some countries don't even give Pharmacology degrees, only Pharmacy ones. But afaik UK does both.

Yes, I have a degree in pharmacology from a University which had both pharmacy and pharmacology courses. There were maybe 2 shared modules in the first year and that was the only similarities in the courses. Pharmacology trains you to be a research scientist, pharmacy trains you to be a clinician (or an over-qualified shop assistant as we joked).

Yep, I know that. I'm pretty deeply interested in pharmacology (and related research), despite I've never earned a degree in either. And from all the contact I had with people holding either, the differences are striking, indeed.

and doctors/hospitalists continue to receive all the glory and high pay checks...

Well, 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.

I 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.

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