La revista Molécula de la Universidad de Castilla La Mancha publica en su número de octubre, en la página 19, un precioso artículo de José Elguero titulado “Algunos trabajos olvidados”. En él, Elguero reflexiona sobre aquellas publicaciones que un científico produce a lo largo de su vida y que, por unas razones u otras, no llegan a tener el recorrido que probablemente merecían. Pero podemos ir incluso un paso más allá: a veces esos artículos desaparecen, casi literalmente, de la faz de la Tierra, por motivos espúreos.

Adelanto algunas frases del artículo que invitan a leerlo:

“Hicimos los experimentos (…). Lo escribimos, lo mandamos a Angewandte y el editor lo rechazó diciendo que Angewandte no publica resultados negativos (!).”

“Eso me recuerda a una frase de “El hombre que mató a Liberty Valence” (John Ford, 1962): Esto es el Oeste, señor. Cuando la leyenda se convierte en realidad, hay que publicar la leyenda (This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend). En este tema la batalla entre la verdad y la tradición no está perdida.“

“Resulta que varios autores han observado el mismo comportamiento y lo han “cripto­publicado”, es decir, escondido en el manuscrito. Así que decidimos publicarlo de una manera escandalosa (…) con la esperanza de suscitar una discusión, pero, ay qué dolor, este trabajo solo ha sido citado dos veces y ambas por nosotros.”

Seguro que más de uno ha vivido experiencias similares pero, como es bien sabido, rara vez las historias sin final feliz tienen éxito en el complejo mercado de la ciencia.

Se puede leer el artículo completo aquí.

While enjoying this year 2022 an ARPU mobility grant from the Spanish Goverment to develop a research project at the Universidade de Vigo with Marcos Mandado, I had the opportunity to attend a few meetings (all of them in Galicia) for the first time since the COVID-19 global pandemic started: the XII Jornadas de Jóvenes Investigadores en Física Atómica y Molecular (Santiago de Compostela), the TCCM workshop -where I was also the chairwoman of one of the sessions- and the Electronic Structure: Principles and Applications (ESPA) 2022 conference, where I had the pleasure to be part of the Local Organizing Comittee.

I guess we are all coming back to (scientific) life, somehow, after two years of online teaching and spending time outdoors with friends in the coldest winter!

Each scientist has experienced different circumstances during this pandemic (the end of which is not clear at all).

Meanwhile, scientists study how scientists are affected by COVID-19:

“COVID-19 has not affected all scientists equally. A survey of principal investigators indicates that female scientists, those in the ‘bench sciences’ and, especially, scientists with young children experienced a substantial decline in time devoted to research. This could have important short- and longer-term effects on their careers, which institution leaders and funders need to address carefully.” Read more on Nature

After a very nice first contact with the chemical bonding community in Aachen, Germany in September 2017, I decided to attend the ESCB2 (Second European Symposium on Chemical Bonding) in Oviedo. The meeting will take place from September 3rd to 7th, but there will be a practical school on quantum chemical topology tools in chemical bonding just before the beginning of the conference. The programme has all the ingredients to give the audience what expected for a conference of this kind: bonding, bonding and more bonding… but some asturian sidra as well, I hope!

I will present some recent works related to alkaline-earth one electron-three center bonds, which are key for the ability of some derivatives to present electron affinities among the largest reported for neutral closed shell systems.

See you in Oviedo!

I am attending the next Electronic Structure: Principles and Applications conference to be held in Toledo, Spain, from 17 to 19 July 2018. In this occasion, I will present some of the results I obtained while working on boron-beryllium interactions with Dr Ibon Alkorta and Dr José Elguero at the Instituto de Química Médica (IQM-CSIC).

The venue of ESPA 2018 is a very special place: the Real Fábrica de Armas. I am also attending a special symposium in honour of Professors Otilia Mó and Manuel Yáñez from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, that will take place on Monday 16th at the same place.

See you in Toledo this summer!

I like very much this initiative prepared by Eduard Matito,
Ferran Feixas and Henry Rzepa for the next CB2017 Conference in Aachen, September 2017. This is how the Unusual Chemical Bonding Challenge works:

http://cb2017.rwth-aachen.de/ChemBond_files/chembondslam.pdf

The challenge is already available online on the wiki website:

http://dipc.ehu.es/bondslam/index.php/Main_Page

From the wiki website slides can be downloaded and you can also interact with “unusual bonds” proposed by other researchers. Everyone is invited to participate in this challenge; the deadline is August 31th to be discussed during the CB2017 conference. The Organizers say that “even if you’ll not come to the conference you
can perfectly contribute to the challenge on-line only. Your contribution
will be briefly presented by the chairmen of the session during the
conference.”  Enjoy and participate!

You’ve probably heard this Seinfeld joke:

 

According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.

 

Knowing humans, this shouldn’t be that surprising. I’ve mentioned before that we all have this problem where we’re weirdly obsessed with what other people think of us, so it makes sense that public speaking should be our collective phobia.

Read this very interesting text by Tim Urban about public speaking, which can be very useful for scientists:  Doing a TED Talk

A very interesting text, by Jan Blommaert:

“... We had set up an international consortium earlier on, did profound content preparation, and one of our team members spent hundreds of hours and several international trips worth several thousands of Euros preparing the application. (…)

My guess is that many millions’ worth of (usually) taxpayers’ money will have been used – wasted – in this massive and mass grantwriting effort. Several hundreds of researchers will have been involved, each spending dozens if not hundreds of their salaried working hours on preparing the application, and hundreds of university administrators will have been involved as well, also spending salaried working hours on the applications. These millions of Euros have not been used in creative and innovative research – they weren’t spent on doing fieldwork, experiments or tests, nor on writing papers and holding presentations in workshops and symposiums. They were spent on – nothing.  (…)

By awarding just 1,3% of the applications, thus, a rather thoroughly absurd reality is shaped: almost 99% of the competing academics in the EU do not make the mark, and just 1,3% satisfies the EU benchmark. Now, we know that the 98,7% “losers” still have to compete in order to show that they are good enough; but when a selection bottleneck is thàt narrow, the effort, and the resources invested into it, are in effect simply wasted.

The paradox is clear: by going along with the stampede of competitive external funding acquisition, almost all universities across the EU will lose not just money, but extremely valuable research time for their staff. (…)”

Read the complete text: https://alternative-democracy-research.org/2015/06/10/rationalizing-the-unreasonable-there-are-no-good-academics-in-the-eu/

“… Their h-index, right at the top. Now you know their quality as a scholar. Or do you?(…) Today, this number is used for both informal evaluation (like sizing up colleagues) and formal evaluation (like tenure and promotion). We think that’s a problem. The h-index is failing on the job, and here’s how…“

Read more

(Thanks to György Hantal!)

The scientific editorial system explained by Gabriel León.