Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
establish your business as a brand-new endeavor, with the future pre-
dominant on your horizon (Schultz 2000).
Green Chemistry was such a ploy. It was a renaming and rebranding
of industrial chemistry, terming research in environmentally-friendly
processes: under mild conditions of pressure and temperature, dispensing
with organic solvents, releasing innocuous wastes only, if at all. 33,34
The Internet was influential in such attempts at rebranding parts of
chemistry, to the benefit of individual scientists. Those were able to build
an allegiance with their constituency through the Web, to set-up net-
works too, in a much shorter time than within the traditional pre-existing
brands - analytical or physical chemistry, say - and became more rele-
vant to perceived needs in doing so (Schultz 2000).
The Internet made networking easier (Bachrach 1996), so much is in-
controvertible. However, would it facilitate regrouping the chemical
community, its various segments each into its mainstream? Or converse-
ly, would it make it easier to splinter into finer and finer subdisciplines,
as a symptom of disciplinary maturity? Both of these trends, the centripe-
tal and the centrifugal, can be discerned. 35
The former, the rush into conformity, 36 explains the continued pull of
various fads, the appearance of ephemeral vogues that would enlist sup-
33 James Clark at the University of York was one of its leading advocates. Professor
Clark is Head of the York Green Chemistry Group, Scientific Editor of the Green
Chemistry Journal , Director of the Green Chemistry Network, Joint Co-ordinator of
the Green Chemistry Research Network, and Series Editor of the RSC Clean Tech-
nology Monographs .
34
The New Yorker published on July 5, 2004, p. 84, a cartoon by artist Mick Stevens. It
depicts the headquarters of a chemical company. While the chimneystacks are spew-
ing-out dark, presumably noxious smoke, the corporation advertises its efforts at con-
trolling its own image. The cartoon illustrates how comically self-defeating such an
attempt appears to the lay public. As illustrated in this cartoon, the efforts by the
chemical industry to redeem itself in the public eye were doomed. There was a back-
lash in public opinion against the new image promoted by the chemical industry. The
very fact that, at the same time, high-profit pharmaceutical branches divorced from
their low-profit, cyclical chemical siblings, made even more unbelievable the claims
by the chemical industry that it was safe and clean - even though such claims were
the truth. To eradicate a prejudice ain't easy!
35
It was the Age of Globalization too, which greatly affected, in particular, recruitment
of graduate students and postdocs in American universities (Tobias et al . 1995,
COSEPUP 2000, Walker et al . 2004).
36
Michael J. S. Dewar has been not only lucid, delightfully sarcastic too, about this un-
fortunate tendency (Dewar 1992).
Search WWH ::




Custom Search