CCL: Computational Chemistry - Arm chair Scientists !!!
- From: Michel Petitjean <petitjean.chiral{:}gmail.com>
- Subject: CCL: Computational Chemistry - Arm chair Scientists
!!!
- Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:24:42 +0100
Sent to CCL by: Michel Petitjean [petitjean.chiral%a%gmail.com]
Dear All,
Here (France), only experimental chemistry is recognized. Tasks
requiring computers are often considered as low level secondary tasks,
easy to do (or to be done by some student). Proof: the ten years old
son of the experimentalist plays on the net all the day, so computer
tasks are easy to do (however it may be boring the experimentalist).
The true researchers are the experimentalists, and the other ones must
serve the experimentalists because they are not true researchers. Only
one exception: the quantum chemists (called here "theoretical
chemists") constitute a well recognized community, of which many
members consider themselves as superior to any other chemist, probably
due to the stupid ranking math > physics > chemistry > biology >
social sciences and all the rest (quantum chemistry thus appears
closer to physics than the rest of chemistry). A consequence is that
chem/info people not falling in the quantum chemistry field are
ignored, and by no way
are considered: difficulties to get funds, evaluation of activity done
by quantum chemists who do not care, etc.
By the way, please let me know where I can read the definition of the
following fields:
computational chemistry, theoretical chemistry, mathematical
chemistry, quantum chemistry, cheminformatics, chemometrics,
structural bioinformatics, molecular modeling.
Particularly, I would be interested to know how cheminformatics is
defined, and in what it differs from the other fields enumerated
above.
Finally, in-silico chemists play and do not work. Proof: they have
time to read and to write posts in the CCL forum while the
experimentalists really work.
Thanks.
Michel Petitjean,
DSV/iBiTec-S/SB2SM (CNRS URA 2096), CEA Saclay, bat. 528,
91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France.
Phone: +331 6908 4006 / Fax: +331 6908 4007
E-mail: michel.petitjean*cea.fr, petitjean.chiral*gmail.com
http://petitjeanmichel.free.fr/itoweb.petitjean.freeware.html
Sent to CCL by: "Soumya Samineni" [soumya_samineni|*|rediffmail.com]
Dear all,
With the ever increasing computational power, there has been an
enormous growth in the theoretical/computational chemistry (
personally i feel the word "Theoretical Chemistry" has been abused by
considering it as an alternative word for "Computational chemsitry" by
people practising computational chemistry). while people doing
computational chemistry are also growing like mushrooms and the volume
of pages occupied by it has also exploded, the number of people doing
the theoretical chemistry (analytical) is dwindling with time.
Any ways: It would be nice to hear comments from the leading (and
novice) experts of computational and theoretical chemistry regarding
the general feeling of the experimental community (who consider that
they toil pretty hard physically for every bit of the sentence they
write .. ) that we are "Arm chair scientists", who like to quench our
thirst for science sitting before a computer all through the day and
gulping loads of liquids !!
I hope a small debate would make things more clear.
regards
Soumya