The Chemistry of Hope

When asked to consider "The Chemistry of Hope" I had to take a step back because my mind was flooded with concepts. On the most fundamental level, hope and research are linked.

After a bit of thought (and discussion with my physicist fiancé), we realized that hope really defines who we are as graduate students and researchers. Scientists are frequently depicted as intellectual, cool, unemotional people who deal with numbers and big words and little else. In truth, the life of a scientist revolves around hope and imagination. Hope is composed of dreams, optimism, belief and imagination. These are all components that are essential for any researcher. You have to have the imagination to approach a problem, the belief that you can answer the question and the optimism that no matter how many times you may fail, you will prevail in the end.

In this lens, I will explore the junction of chemistry (and science as a whole) with hope.

If you were to consider the composition of hope, what would come to mind? If this were an organic chemistry problem (I can hear the groans coming from the class) we would take a look at the final result (in this case hope) and would be able to use whatever we could think of to make it. It isn't what you start with that is important, it is the process of how you reach the end.

If you were to break hope apart into it's most fundamental components, you would find optimism at the center suspended in a solution of dreams. If you stir in an aliquot of imagination, suddenly things start bubbling out. The final ingredient in our synthesis is belief. With this all mixed together, you have hope.

As scientists, we strive to see how the world works. But in order to get funding to obtain this fundamental understanding, we need to have some ideas about how it could work. You stake your reputation on your scientific hypotheses, and then hope that you are right (or at least not completely wrong.)

The percentage of potential drugs that are discovered in a laboratory that end up making it all the way through the clinical trial process is minuscule. In each case, researchers hope that the tests will show that the compound is not toxic and it does provide a health benefit. You do have to acknowledge that you could be wrong, but in order to spend time and money on a problem you have to hope that your hypothesis is correct.

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During my thoughts of the Chemistry of Hope, I came across the following article: Chemistry - The Hope of Man published just after the conclusion of the second world war. Unfortunately, you won't be able to read the whole article without access to a university's journal subscriptions (unless you buy the article.)

Episode Summary:Pacho McGuerney's parents, refuse to allow Dr. Welby to tell their teen-aged son that he has leukemia.

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In graduate school, your grades aren't important. The only thing that matters is the question, "Is this publishable?" You hope to get a result that your PI (principal investigator) will allow you to write up and submit to a journal. After all, your publication record is what you will be based on for the rest of your career in science. Time and time again, you set up the same experiment to have it fail. But you keep doing it, waiting the long hours for yet another useless result. Why do we we put up with this? Because we have hope. We believe in the question, and hope that the technique we are attempting will give us some answers to that question.

On Dec 13, 2010 DecoratingforEvents wrote a beautiful review of this lens. Thank you for the support!

This lens earned a purple star on 12/22/2010!