The Ethical Chemist

I was just at the 94th Canadian Society for Chemistry Conference in Montreal, QC, Canada. I have to say that the best talks that I attended were in the Chemical Education sessions.  My favourite talks were those on academic integrity and on chemiophobia. Both topics were extremely interesting. The academic integrity section was most interesting because it brought up the questions of "what is academic integrity"? "What is academic misconduct?" We as a chemical society need to take a more active role in teaching academic integrity. Our standard of ethics becomes equivalent to a doctor's Hippocratic Oath. I fully accept the point that was made in these talks by Stacey Brydges from the University of California San Diego and Tricia Bertram Gallant also from the University of California San Diego that we cannot just expect students to read the Student Code of Conduct on their first day of university and know exactly what that means. For example: http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/gfcpolicymanual/content.cfm?ID_page=37633

This would be the link to the Code of Student Behaviour at the University of Alberta. I have been at the U of A for several years and have never once read this document in its entirety. It is boring, full of jargon, and confusing. Who reads this thing? So students say: don't cheat-got it. But that grossly overlooks many of the pressures and grey areas involved in academic misconduct. Let's face it, even the most senior academic can make mistakes that can ultimately cost them their job with regard to less than integrous decisions. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/prairies/deans-plagiarized-speech-prompts-investigation/article2059535/

This also ties into chemiophobia. What scientist has heard of research being over sensationalised in the media and gotten frustrated at a public who doesn't understand the difference between a cause and a correlation? http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174 After discussing this with my sister, it occurred to me that it may be part of our ethics as a chemical society to work on educating the public on science. The medical community has put a lot of resources toward trying to educate the public on medicine. Why not the scientific community?  We owe it to our profession to break down the mysticism and scariness associated with chemistry. We owe it to our profession to educate the public on the scientific procedure. We can't just get mad at the media for not presenting it correctly. Did anyone ever try to educate the media on exactly what it is they are presenting?

I guess that is how I see the purpose of this blog. I am doing my best to educate the public on chemical questions. I wish to break down some of those barriers associated with chemistry and the public and present chemistry in a positive light. I suppose some of doing that means I should stop writing as a pseudonym and start writing as the chemist that I am, so that my credentials on this matter can be verified. So please, send me any chemical questions that you may have, and I will do my best to answer them.

Brenna Brown B.Sc. Honours (University of Alberta 2007)

Ph. D. candidate 

Department of Chemistry, University of Alberta