Chemists and their (apparently) terrible art skills

[hypervalent_iodine]

I was searching for some inspiration for a frontispiece for a review I'm submitting and was once again surprised by just how bad some of them were - and all from some of the best chemistry journals out. I'm sure this can't be unique to chemists, but it sure seems to be especially prevalent in chemistry related papers / journals. Thought I'd share a few of the gems I came across.

 

 

 

(http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cs501366q)

 

 

(http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ac501953z)

 

 

Edit: I forget where this one came from, but it's a clear favorite.

 

[CharonY]

Yeah, the last one is definitely not bad. If they added hellfire missiles it would have been genius. The tongue one is probably acid induced (neither Bronsted, Arrhenius nor Lewis)..

 

Actually in bio I found that people either use microscopic images (cheap way out) or drawings from 5 year olds. The exception tend to be the outdoor biologist who apparently took freaking arts classes between their bloody hikes.

Edited February 11, 2015 by CharonY

[StringJunky]

Artistic sensibility and science are disparate disciplines on the whole so the lack of artistic maturity is not surprising imo. Unfettered Imagination is not exactly nurtured in science is it?

[CharonY]

Well, I found that botanist and zoologist often have an incredible eye for detail and often are very good drawers. Especially the old school folks prefer drawings over e.g. photos as they claim that they can highlight specifics better. And also evaluate whether the drawer actually identified the species correctly. Maybe it is the fresh air that helps.

 

A similar thing could be said for certain subsets of histology and microscopy people. However they are somewhat split.

About half are incredible in remembering and visualizing and often drawing histological details (and may arguably be the better biologists because of that), the other half are more technically inclined and good at getting high resolution images but may be less capable in interpreting the relevance of the data.

[StringJunky]

Well, I found that botanist and zoologist often have an incredible eye for detail and often are very good drawers. Especially the old school folks prefer drawings over e.g. photos as they claim that they can highlight specifics better. And also evaluate whether the drawer actually identified the species correctly. Maybe it is the fresh air that helps.

 

A similar thing could be said for certain subsets of histology and microscopy people. However they are somewhat split.

About half are incredible in remembering and visualizing and often drawing histological details (and may arguably be the better biologists because of that), the other half are more technically inclined and good at getting high resolution images but may be less capable in interpreting the relevance of the data.

Yes, true, and there's some astronomical telescope observers as well who are very good at direct drawing. I suppose it's more of lack of ability to make clever artistic abstractions that gets the idea across in an eye-catching and interesting way; graphic-design skills really. Studying advertising images might be good training.

[ajb]

You see a few diagrams in mathematics papers sometimes. For example intersections of surfaces, but these will be drawn on a computer. I have never seen the flair for abstract art here, beyond the abstract mathematics of course.

 

My question is, are these low ranking journals or are all journals in chemistry becoming artistic?

[hypervalent_iodine]

You see a few diagrams in mathematics papers sometimes. For example intersections of surfaces, but these will be drawn on a computer. I have never seen the flair for abstract art here, beyond the abstract mathematics of course.

 

My question is, are these low ranking journals or are all journals in chemistry becoming artistic?

 

No, all of those are from moderately-very good journals. The first one is from Angewandte Chemie International Edition, which is one of the best as far as journals go, but worst so far as graphical abstracts / frontispieces are concerned.

 

Artistic sensibility and science are disparate disciplines on the whole so the lack of artistic maturity is not surprising imo. Unfettered Imagination is not exactly nurtured in science is it?

 

I don't know that I agree all that much about the comment on imagination. Maybe not, 'unfettered,' but science usually requires at least some degree of imagination / creativity. At least in my experience. You're right, though, that this is more a failing in compiling good graphics rather than creating art, per say.

 

I suppose it's not that strange that chemistry should be particularly notorious for it. There's not as much of a call for fancy graphics unless journals want something for the online version or frontispiece as there might be in other areas. As a side note, I made a mock frontispiece last night for the review I finished up writing to parody the terrible ones seen so often in Angewandte. My boss actually wanted to use it. Probably a failing on my part.

[John Cuthber]

As far as I can tell this whole thread is baseless.

The pictures in science journals are not generally drawn by scientists.

 

So the question should be

"Why do these pictures which were almost certainly drawn by commercial artists not appeal to Hypervalent iodine very much?"

and, to be honest, my answer is "who cares?"

[CharonY]

Actually that is not true. For starters, .many journals have images from scientist on the title page (a couple of mine or from my group have been featured). In addition, there is a recent trend in a number of journals for authors to submit a summary image for the paper abstract (which is what H-I is referring to).

ACS journals have been pushing it hard (used to be voluntarily but now it is mandatory). IIRC Nature and Science did not request one, but actually created one for approval in the report section. In biological journal it is rare, I believe. From that it may be true that chemical journals tend to favor it (would not be surprised if some of the leading journals tried it and everyone copied them).

 

Obviously, not everyone invest a lot of time into those. Personally, I do not care much for them and invest little time in creating them (though every now and then you could cram in a collage of pics that did make it into the main paper).

But again, obviously the artistic quality of the individuals will range quite a bit. And has been pointed out, typically there is no formal training and it will dependent on individual abilities and interests (though those in areas which require either excellent data representation or visual abilities may have an edge).

Edited February 12, 2015 by CharonY

[hypervalent_iodine]

As far as I can tell this whole thread is baseless.

The pictures in science journals are not generally drawn by scientists.

 

So the question should be

"Why do these pictures which were almost certainly drawn by commercial artists not appeal to Hypervalent iodine very much?"

and, to be honest, my answer is "who cares?"

As far as I'm aware, the authors tend to be the ones making the images I was referring to. In any case, this was just a light-hearted thread about something I thought was amusing. Don't care? Good for you. As it happens, this thread doesn't need you to care about it, or even post in it if it truly doesn't appeal to you.

[StringJunky]

As far as I'm aware, the authors tend to be the ones making the images I was referring to. In any case, this was just a light-hearted thread about something I thought was amusing. Don't care? Good for you. As it happens, this thread doesn't need you to care about it, or even post in it if it truly doesn't appeal to you.

It is a perfectly fine question to ask and have a light-hearted chat about. Some people need to learn to censor themselves and protect others from their more mardy moments.

Edited February 13, 2015 by StringJunky

[ajb]

I have never seen such front pieces of artwork before; book covers sure and often the link between the cover and the book is not always clear! It is quite standard in chemistry? What about other subjects?

 

 

Aside:

I for one am glad that no such art work is required for the journals I submit to. I often include commutative diagrams, these are standard, but they are just a collection of arrows. The closest to these art works I have done are some simple diagrams for some notes I have written. These are just some surfaces with fibres attached to represent the local picture of a fibre bundle. Also I have a diagram of a point surrounded by fuzz which represents the ideas of noncommutative geometry. This can give you some intuition, but such diagrams need to be handled carefully and don't replace the actual maths.

 

On the hand, I have generated lots of mathematical images just for the fun of it.

[CharonY]

Well, I think H-I manage to find some of the more artsy examples. Typical images are e.g. a relevant plot, or the image of the device in action or microscopic images or sometimes a cartoon illustrating the issue (e.g. a cell surrounded by toxins that have been investigated in the paper).

As far as I can see they rarely serve informative purposes. I do not even know when they started doing it. At some point the editors started sending out requests for them. If I think about it, it seems to be more a publishers thing rather than a discipline thing per se. E.g. ACS requires it now (which is mostly chemistry, obviously) but other publisher also start requesting those. I guess it is becoming a general trend now.

 

To quote something from Elsevier:

 

A Graphical Abstract should allow readers to quickly gain an understanding of the main take-home message of the paper and is intended to encourage browsing, promote interdisciplinary scholarship, and help readers identify more quickly which papers are most relevant to their research interests. The Graphical Abstract should summarize the contents of the paper in a concise, pictorial form designed to capture the attention of a wide readership. Authors must provide images that clearly represent the work described in the paper. A key, summarizing figure taken from the original paper can also be submitted as a graphical abstract.

 

But quite frankly, most pepole would be concerened about getting the article published and once they get that, they are going to be less interested in creating an attractive figure for the abstract. It is just not worth the time, especially if you do not have a graphical illustrator handy. It seems to me that this a way for the publishers to save money and still make their articles more colorful. Outsourcing more work to the authors (and the quality of editing seemed to have dropped to in some journals).

 

Some journals such as Nature and Science actually have illustrators that create images based on featured articles.

[hypervalent_iodine]

ACS has a similar set of guidelines, though they also specify that images used in the paper itself should be avoided for graphical abstracts. Most of the papers I see in chemistry journals have some kind of arty addition to them. A friend put me on to this website a few years ago, which is regularly updated with pretty good examples.

 

I should say, I don't have a problem with the fact that a few graphical abstracts that get published are so bad. Writing a paper is work enough without having to also deal with that. Secondly, it's a decent source of amusement when hunting through literature and I certainly wouldn't complain about that.

[CharonY]

Yeah, but honestly I cannot be bothered by it. I often just take a figure and add e.g. the component/organism/whatver stuff I have around to it and call it a day. Or, in one case, I completely forgot and they made one for me (based on a supplementary figure). In some cases I know that the PI is annoyed by that crap and deliberately make something awful.

But from a PI point of view it is annoying that we pay quite a lot to publish something, have to deal with crappy editing of some journals (ACS is quite uneven in that regard) and then on top get that annoying thing to deal with.

[ajb]

A friend put me on to this website a few years ago, which is regularly updated with pretty good examples.

I would question the meaning of 'good' here!

 

Some are very funny, but I am not sure if they add anything to the science. I don't think there is much of a 'take home' message in these images. Still, very funny.

[John Cuthber]

As far as I'm aware, the authors tend to be the ones making the images I was referring to. In any case, this was just a light-hearted thread about something I thought was amusing. Don't care? Good for you. As it happens, this thread doesn't need you to care about it, or even post in it if it truly doesn't appeal to you.

You seem to have missed the point I do care about.

Imagine that I posted up some pictures and said "I think (though I haven't actually checked) that these pictures were drawn by [ insert persecuted minority of your choice].

Why are [persecuted minority of your choice] so bad at drawing?"

 

Would you see a problem with that?

If someone pointed out that you hadn't even checked that the artists were from that group and that you hadn't actually shown the at was, in any objective sense, bad, would you berate them for doing so?

[John]

John, you're taking this thread a bit too seriously, and while there is a point to be made that even joking stereotypes of persecuted minority groups can be harmful, even when made by members of those groups, that hardly applies here.

 

...unless, of course, you're claiming chemists comprise a persecuted minority group, which might not be too far off the mark given current attitudes and policy relating to science in certain countries.

 

In any case, this thread is simply a bit of self-deprecating fun, and there's no need to treat it as such serious business.

[John Cuthber]

I'm less concerned about the tacit insult than I am about the lack of science.

The evidence that the drawings were actually produced by chemists is equivocal at best, and was non existent when the thread started.

[ajb]

The evidence that the drawings were actually produced by chemists is equivocal at best, and was non existent when the thread started.

Either way, is there any evidence that graphical abstract work? I was thinking in the sense of telling you more about the article than the title and how this aides the written abstract.

Edited February 15, 2015 by ajb

[John Cuthber]

That's a more interesting question.

Even if it's lousy as an explanation, does the fact that it's eye catching mean that people are more likely to read the article?

If more people read it, does that mean it's doing a better job?

[CharonY]

Nah, these tend to be specialized journals, meaning that it is more common to specifically search for topics/keywords/authors. Also, the are rarely of a quality that they add anything meaningful for the abstract. IMO it is a pure marketing stunt on the expense of the authors. As a side note, ACS and Elsevier, both publishers that kind of push these graphical abstracts, are also among the worst in terms of author's rights, including self-archiving.