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"Missing, too, are tales of heroes, villains and eccentrics. We don’t share them enough. Instead, chemistry chat obsesses over minutiae"

Focusing on great figures of the field, past and present, is somehow important of course, but chemistry and its evolutions are not based solely on them. I mean, chemists are not just heroes or villains, but rather scientists who work, teach and create in a particular context, of course.

On the other hand, I totally agree that chem comm shouldn't be "a razzle-dazzle of goop, fire and explosions". Though, in a way, such bad chem comm is an inadequate attempt to show that chemistry is a "cool" field, perhaps to counteract the general image of the discipline among lay people, because we are all aware how the chemical industry is considered by most of them, et caetera.

Chemistry holds a large variety of subdisciplines, expands towards physics, biology, astronomy thus enriching them, rather than being some kind of sub-physics or some useful set of techniques for biologists. I mean, from a epistemologic point of view, chemistry as we know it today is really far from being diluted in other mains scientific disciplines. I think - without any kind of scientism or any deficit model bias - they can develop news ways to promote the discipline as a whole, without any kind of sensationnalism. Chemists (as professionals and experts, from academia and industry) know the applications of their very field of work, and they should also really rely more on historians, sociologists and science communicators to discuss and promote hand-in-hand the discipline as a whole. Giving a broader, nuanced, simple but not simplistic, concrete image of the discipline to the lay people is something that can be accomplished.

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