At the same time, based on our work in the professional relations office of the American Chemical Society I see an increasing interest in this kind of arrangement among certain groups of scientists. We are moving toward an era of “modularity” of career stages: a preference for easy-in, easy-out, easy-return jobs.
Several forces are making part-time science feasible. As an example, the high-tech end of industrial chemistry is becoming more of a service industry. More chemists are not handling chemicals, but are creating information about highly engineered materials.
With this kind of activity work will be less tied to monitoring processes. And with automated laboratories, there will be even less demand for the chemist to be in a particular place at a particular time.
If we look at the economics, more market-driven research programs will mean less continuity of research effort and will make ad-hoc puzzle-solving teams more attractive. Employers ...
