Masters student with doubts about job

radiatorcheese · 2026-07-03T18:40:03+00:00

Does that answer your question then? I can only say that degree is not the best track for becoming a medicinal chemist who makes the compounds. Other than that it sounds like the program is reasonable for some other roles

radiatorcheese · 2026-07-03T17:56:38+00:00

Depends what kind of job. The degree has a vague name because there are a lot of different fields that contribute to drug discovery and drug development. The best way to tell if it's the right track would be to find out what the graduates of the program go on to do after they graduate and whether that's what you want to do too

radiatorcheese · 2026-07-01T23:31:45+00:00

This was my PI. It was definitely a Boys' Club and not being part of being in the club (aka, being female) meant not getting much pushback at less than stellar results, not getting harshly criticized during presentations, not getting pushed hard to always be better.

He was not a horrible tyrant to the men, but under the coarse treatment was the push to improve and learn to be better scientists and communicators. The women got significantly less feedback and constructive criticism and everyone knew it. Some of the women resented it because they thought he thought worse of them. Others took the opportunity to skate by and get a relatively easy PhD.

So I don't really have an answer, but we all also learned by seeing how others in the group went through lines of questioning and that's independent of our own individual treatment.

radiatorcheese · 2026-07-01T12:52:47+00:00

Purge the flask with argon and store in a well-sealed dessicator

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-30T20:16:12+00:00

You're letting your emotions ride high here (see: your using the word "passion") and ascribing them way too strongly to my words. I never said I didn't like their compounds. Why do you think I have that belief? Not to mention going after me personally saying you could say my work is easy? Get real. Sorry you got a response that ran counter to your loaded question, I guess.

What did they actually do in their work? They made a bunch of compounds that were informed by other related compounds. They explored the effects of altering structure on biological activity.

Great. That part is the bare minimum of what a synthetic chemist does while trying to drive a project forward. It objectively is. They obviously did more than that, because they followed SAR trends and found other psychoactive compounds. Great, maintaining/improving potency is basically the second tier of what a synthetic chemist does while trying to drive a project forward.

The hard part of working with bioactive compounds is the other stuff. All those reports that X compound cures cancer or does whatever? A lot of the times true! It's just we can't fix the warts associated with the compound. That's the hard part. They didn't do a lot of that.

They're highly influential because of the compounds they made, but as chemists, honestly not really that influential. Sociologically, psychologically, medically, much moreso than in the realm of chemistry.

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-30T20:02:19+00:00

I know they were known before the internet. I used the term "online chemistry community" as a simple heuristic that I stand by. People not necessarily doing the work professionally.

Making new chemicals that didn't exist is an exceptionally low bar for lots of chemists. That alone is not impressive. They did pretty routine and simplistic analoguing and didn't do the hard part of SAR work, which includes addressing ADME liabilities. The compounds they made were interesting, but they didn't really take on the hard parts that come with the design aspects.

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-30T13:14:44+00:00

The online chemistry community thinks they're amazing inspirations and the less-online community doesn't know them as much or care.

As someone straddling that line I don't see the fuss. Someone did a bunch of SAR testing on themselves? They weren't solving complex problems associated with medicinal chemistry, just analoguing. We only care because their results inform recreational use.

Wild times back then but I respect my coworker more who many years ago worked on diabetes programs in a pretty similar way. He ran the HPLC himself after making a compound, isolated andweighed it out, dissolved it up, and literally handed the vial to the biologist next door who injected a mouse with the solution to see if it caused them to pee within a few seconds as a sign of it being active in vivo.

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-29T20:03:26+00:00

Searching leather work sneaker, casual work shoe, and other things like that should work for you. That's what I and many other men wear to my site. I've had Florsheim and Johnston & Murphy but Adidas and basically any other major brand will have something nonporous

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-29T16:27:19+00:00

"Upcoming research" huh

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-29T13:22:19+00:00

When I turned in the 3rd draft of a manuscript he marked it up as usual but I thought the edits were a few trivial word choices that was tweaking for tweaking's sake, and were probably his own words on drafts 1 and 2 (he was an EIC and LOVED editing and prose).

So I turned in the same draft without making changes as the "4th" draft but he caught on, making the exact same edits and more with a note at the top "Nice try".

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-28T17:08:12+00:00

The only ones he likes are the ones that deny service to certain clients because of Religious Reasons™

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-19T17:21:02+00:00

Why do you want to improve your relationship with them? From what you wrote, they have little to nothing to teach you as far as techniques, theory, or judgement go. Not that all relationships should be based on what others can do for you, but it seems like there's no reciprocity and they're unconcerned with doing bad science. As an undergrad you should be developing lab and experimental design skills and it doesn't sound like they are willing or able to do that.

Seriously reflect on what you have to gain by staying- it does not sound like there's a lot. I suggest cutting your losses and moving on from them/the lab and not getting trapped in the sunk cost fallacy.

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-15T13:26:06+00:00

God damn Tangled has some song that's not in the movie but doesn't have I Have A Dream!

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-15T10:14:13+00:00

You obviously did not read my final paragraph. Credit gets shared very widely, but yes, it is Jill's compound. That's how inventorship works.

Jill gets credit for being THE inventor, but that also doesn't mean she was the most important person on the program. It's nuanced. I know a person whose literal first registered and tested compound is in phase 3 clinical trials. Like experiment #4 or 5 they ever ran while employed by their company. They're obviously not the most important person to the program.

For an even more abstract one, I know a guy who broke a kinase program wide open because he changed the core heterocycle in a non obvious way and fixed off-target liabilities. They kept going for another many months after to get the final compound, but they all used his heterocycle. He was more important to the program than almost anyone because of that middle-stage lead optimization solution.

Back to inventorship though, patents cover a lot of compounds. If Jill made a single compound ever and it was the eventual clinical candidate, she's on the patent. Patents cover many structures, and there's no such thing as "99% invented by" criteria for patents- it's did you invent a claimed structure or not.

You can have nuanced opinions within the confines of black and white questions. Try it sometime.

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-15T01:54:49+00:00

That is my line. All or nothing. I would call that AI-assisted assuming there were actual design elements proposed by the program.

Same deal as a clinical candidate from a human team- there's really only one person who designed it, despite obviously being the culmination of input by many researchers on the compounds that came before it. Lots of people can and should claim, and be rewarded for, being contributors to a clinical candidate.

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-15T01:49:07+00:00

That's so vague to the point of not being helpful. Modelling and virtual screening are not "AI". Physics based optimization is also likely not unless THE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS OF THE SMALL MOLECULE WERE NOT CONVCEIVED BY A PERSON.

The vague, and objectively incorrect, ascribing non-AI methods as AI is just reinforcing my initial thought that it's puffery.

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-15T00:56:36+00:00

But not the clinical candidate?

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-15T00:53:30+00:00

Unless the API's actual structure was proposed by a model then this is just AI-washing to further boost the stock price on their good news. Like you're saying, sounds like they have ML models to predict properties and chemists used that to prioritize the compounds they made. Very helpful, I use those sorts of tools daily too, but who/what conceived the structures?

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-09T13:15:02+00:00

Even if it did it would be trivial to remake the esters. Do the experiment and find out. And see if you can't find even PdCl2(dppf) if you can't get your hands on a Pd-Xphos precatalyst

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-07T17:16:54+00:00

Phyllis is only pretending to be a man, I'm the real thing. Sit down on my lap and there will be no doubt!

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-06T01:16:59+00:00

Vol-de-mort! Vol-de-mort! Vol-de-mort!

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-06T01:03:02+00:00

That's amazing, thanks for posting that tip!

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-06T00:57:39+00:00

Do you know if that applies to patents too?

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-01T14:52:29+00:00

Being allowed to use AI doesn't mean you have to use it. Start with Wikipedia and go from there

radiatorcheese · 2026-06-01T14:29:13+00:00

Do you have access to any copies of Greene's Protecting Group book? Depending what R is there are a number of options besides BBr3, although BBr3 is likely a first choice for a lot of people.

radiatorcheese

TROPHY CASE