Chemistry and Bureaucracy

One thing regular readers of this blog may have noticed is that in spite of the title "Chemical Adventures in Krakow", very few of these posts describe any kind of chemical activity aside from the occasional imbibing of ethanol. Part of the reason for this is that the people working at the Politechnika daily have to deal with all kinds of external nonsense that prevents them from doing their jobs. Part of this is a simple lack of resources, part of it is the lack of resources, and part of it is caused by the caustic politics of this institution.

The most serious problem is the lack of resources and equipment. For example, I was just informed that we don't have access to nuclear magnetic resonance equipment in this department. This is sort of like saying the theater department doesn't have any stage lights. While we do have a scanning electron microscope, powder X-ray diffraction and elemental analysis available, the equipment is old and I think there's exactly one of each for the entire department. Our group does not have an optical microscope that works, and we're currently having to borrow instrument time from another group. Granted, I think this is a confocal microscope we are using, which is not something every lab in the States has either, but it still took a few weeks to arrange. We have some micro or nanoparticles we would like to find the size of using dynamic light scattering, but we need to talk to somebody somewhere else in order to do so. Even distilled water is not something every lab has: you have to go to a central source somewhere in the department and essentially sign for it: I understand I'm not authorized to get my own distilled water, I have to ask somebody else to do it for me!

(In an American lab, there is a distilled water tap for practically every sink everywhere in the chemistry building. Glassware is routinely rinsed with it.)

This causes perhaps the most visible difference between American laboratory culture and what is found here. When every sample you run has to be farmed out for characterization (in other words, it's not a simple matter of reserving some instrument time somewhere), if you are paying a lot for that characterization or calling in a favor to do it, you have to make every sample count. It does not do to simply run with an idea and see if it turns out. Therefore, the sorts of samples people make tend to be limited to the sorts of samples they are reasonably sure will work beforehand. The problem is, the sorts of things that are most likely to work are things that have already been done, with some small modifications or improvements. Further, professors generally keep much closer track of their groups than some do in the States, as the grad student might end up doing work that isn't useful or makes no sense otherwise.

Then there is the bureaucracy that pervades all levels of the research establishment. Professors have to fill out their students grades in triplicate, by hand, and have to sign for each of them. Individual pieces of paper often have several stamps on them along with signatures. It seems like our group is constantly writing one report or another, either to the Politechnika or to the Ministry of Higher Education or to separate accreditation agencies. Meanwhile, there are multiple academic pecking orders: if you want to get something done you need to make sure to talk to the right person, who may not be who you think it is or it may not even be who the person you talked to thinks it is. For example, on one particular matter I was sent from the Dean's Office on the first floor to the office of a professor on the 6th floor, only for that guy to tell me that the guy I really wanted to talk to was in an office across from the Dean's Office. I've also noticed that a lot of people tend to send you sideways rather than up if something can't be resolved at a particular level. It's usually only after you've exhausted a particular level of bureaucracy that you get moved to a higher level.

All of this illustrates the fact that Chemistry is done in many ways around the world. I also have a new admiration for Polish chemists: while I'm just seeing all this as a tourist, they have to deal with it every day for the rest of their careers.