Top all-time · #13210
Chemjobber
Personal blog · chemjobber.blogspot.comsciencecareer
Chemjobber is a personal blog at chemjobber.blogspot.com about science and career. Since 2015, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters link this blog as related reading on layoffs, citing a graph from an earlier round of cuts. Other comments discuss chemistry teaching and Valeant without judging the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
1. HELPING CHEMISTS FIND JOBS IN A TOUGH MARKET. 2. TOWARDS A QUANTITATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF THE QUALITY OF THE CHEMISTRY JOB MARKET.
What Hacker News says?
I was interviewed for this article though not mentioned in it. My use case isn't mentioned: unaffiliated researchers with limited access to journals doing our own exploration of areas. I've compiled a library of several thousand articles (and via other sources, books) which for both access and portability I prefer electronic versions. My 10" tablet is almost perfect for reading printed material, and functions as a s…
Comment linking /2016/03/postdoc-loses-arm-in-lab-explosion-in.html
on “Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone”Submitted Peter Thiel is more ignorant of pharma/biotech than I knew as a story · 3 points
HN discussionAnyone who thinks the FDA should be abolished should read the Warning Letter of the Week and reconsider: http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/search/label/warning%20letter...
Comment linking /search/label/warning%20letter%20of%20the%20week
on “Insurance copays are higher than the cost of the drug about 25% of the time”Submitted A Chemistry Startup Story as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis link has some pretty hair-raisers: http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/search/label/warning%20letter... Everyone loves to hate on the FDA until there's a compounding pharmacy that really messes up. A couple of years ago there was one that distributed some medication for injection that had a fungal contaminant, and there were several dozens of fatalities. You'd ask yourself what would happen without adult supervision…
Comment linking /search/label/warning%20letter%20of%20the%20week
on “Nonprofit Working to Block Drug Imports Has Ties to Pharma Lobby”Submitted What happened to all the sparteine? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThank you! So much of this discussion is formed by a personal dislike of the topic or bad classroom experiences. I, personally, find accounting to be dreadfully boring, but I don't feel that the pedagogy of the field as a whole needs to conform to my particular tastes. Also, lots of suggestions of incredibly dangerous classroom experiments to jazz things up, coming from people who don't know the dangers of the react…
Comment linking /2019/06/civil-trial-of-nyc-teacher-whose.html?m=1
on “Why introductory chemistry is boring: a long-term historical perspective”Compounding drugs is a non-trivial problem, public safety demands compliance and testing. Not too long ago, there was a rash of deaths (!) from a homoeopathic (!!) belladonna preparation. Turns out, the manufacturer was honest and did use belladonna but had a problem with their dilutions, the distribution was uneven and some of their globuli actually had sufficient atropine to kill an infant. The things were sold as…
Comment linking /search/label/warning%20letter%20of%20the%20week
on “Opaque drug pricing in the U.S.”Worthy subject, but the deindustrialization of Britain didn't spare the chemical industry: http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2019/12/younger-uk-industrial... In the medium run the lack of industrial policy can't be good for the country, you lose too much informal knowledge.
Comment linking /2019/12/younger-uk-industrial-chemists-express.html
on “The Periodic Table of Videos”Related, from earlier layoffs: http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-clarifying-graph-of...
Comment linking /2015/08/a-clarifying-graph-of-ages-of-laid-off.html
on “Intel accused of age discrimination”More details including the documents at Chemjobber: http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2017/05/harvard-matt-shair-be... The bad labour market has paradoxically an effect of encouraging lawsuits. When previously you'd have bailed quickly, nowadays you hang on to your job and collect kompromat .
Comment linking /2017/05/harvard-matt-shair-being-sued-by-former.html
on “Researcher sues Harvard for drug royalties”If a libertarian took a broad enough view of fraud to object to Valeant's core business tactics then we'd get along just fine. I suspect that most do not. Tactic 1: buying other firms' medicines and then swiftly hiking their prices Tactic 2: exploiting the principal agent problem between insurer and insuree with bribes (err, I mean "coupons") There was a comparison to Enron earlier in this thread. While accounting f…
Comment linking /2010/07/whats-happening-to-pharmaceutical.html
on “Pharmacist at center of Valeant scandal accuses drugmaker of 'massive fraud'”This one made the rounds just today: http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2018/05/university-of-minneso... Chronic harassment by a well-known figure in the NMR world at the University of Minnesota - but it's all fine, he continues to be on the payroll. If you don't acknowledge the misconduct the aggrieved employee leaves, and meanwhile you can continue shaking the money tree. There need to be serious financial consequence…
Comment linking /2018/05/university-of-minnesota-biochemistry.html
on “1 in 5 Employees Don't Feel Companies Care About Sexual Harassment”Usually, any issue is less one-dimensional than the headline suggests. Here's some background: http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/2016/04/nucleotides-are-not-p...
Comment linking /2016/04/nucleotides-are-not-permitted-in.html
on “80 Percent of Americans Want to Label Food That Contains DNA”What is worrying is that the article and many other news sources that report on the arrest almost take the allegations as pure fact. There may well be a frame-up or just an overeager prosecutor - how do you even get from a benzyl chloride spill to manufacturing meth (that's manufacturing meth, not manufacturing with intent to distribute). Elsewhere the blogosphere is very sceptical: http://chemjobber.blogspot.com/20…
Comment linking /2019/11/henderson-state-chemistry-professors.html
on “Two Chemistry Professors Arrested for Allegedly Cooking Meth in Arkansas”