Big questions in need of answers

Chemists can be a dour lot sometimes. Down on themselves and occasionally defensive of their field. This attitude pops up each year with the now obligatory chatter over whether the latest chemistry Nobel prize is a ‘chemistry’ prize or if biologists or physicists nabbed it. And a recent survey adds further evidence of this attitude, finding that almost 80% of chemists polled think other fields are more ‘newsworthy’ than their own.