Training Research Chemists. 200 
column headed “The Inquiring Reporter”. This curious individual daily 
asks of five students, chosen at random, a given question and the answers 
are published, verbatim. Ona certain day the question was “What, in your 
opinion, would serve as the best advertisement for our college?” (or words 
to that effect). With one accord the five answers stated that winning 
athletic teams would be the best possible advertisement. “One answer 
included also a successful body of alumni as a second best advertising 
medium but this was the nearest approach to a recognition of the possibil- 
ity of any other fine thing, the heralding of which might serve to attract 
a desirable class of prospective students, or to win the support of public 
opinion and public purses. Apparently no one thought of a high class. 
devoted faculty, whose members can not only know and teach, but do also; 
or (with one exception) of a great body of graduating students who take 
an important and dignified place in the work of the world, or of increased 
equipment for the administration of high grade scientific work. These five 
answers may possibly not be considered as representative of student opin- 
ion but I am inclined to think that they are. I do not mean that our 
students look down upon thee other things or hold them in contempt. They 
simply ignore them when the great question is to be considered. I do not 
even particularly blame them for their attitude. It is perhaps natural. 
under the circumstances. It is certainly almost universal and this is a 
fact that must be considered,—explain, excuse or condemn it as we will. 
Also it is an attitude that persists after graduation. The average body of 
college alumni, desiring in their hearts above all things to “boost” their 
alma mater, will give the major portion of their discussions to the prob- 
lems of improving athletic conditions and of developing winning teams. 
If I have made myself at all clear in what has been said, my next prop- 
osition seems a logical conclusion. It is this. that it is not only a difficult 
matter to give college undergraduates proper training and drill in the 
methods of chemical research, but it may also be undesirable to attempt 
such training, in the majority of cases. Real research is a long, hard, toil- 
some business, rich in rewards but calling for preparation, energy and ap- 
plication such as the average undergraduate does not possess. Far better 
to keep him on the fundamentals of pure and applied science, of which 
he will absorb a woefully small amount under the best conditions, than to 
give him the false notion that after a matter of three or three and a half 
years of intermittent study of an intricate and complex science, he is pre- 
pared to solve scientific problems that have bafed others, or even to know 
how to try to solve them. 
The undergraduate thesis, in the large majority of cases, is little more 
than a piece of more or less mechanical following of directions given by the 
supervising professor, and it rarely develops any dependable results that . 
may be considered as new. It is conceded that the material may be new 
to the student and that the psychological effect may thus be desirable. But 
so are all of his studies new to him. They are all, for him, original 
research in practically the same sense that the the is investigation is orig- 
inal research and if, in his regular studies, he is properly directed in the 
use of the library and if the inspiration to real study is provided, there is 
little real difference between the thesis and the regular study, so far as 
this sort of training is concerned. 
