The COVID-19 pandemic has heavily impacted a number of disciplines across both the sciences and humanities. Although the article doesn’t describe exactly how COVID directly impacts chemistry, my prospective major, it does discuss its impacts on other fields relevant to chemistry such as statistics and biology. Because chemistry is one of the fundamental sciences, concerned with the laws of the universe rather than constantly monitoring complex adaptive systems, it is understandable that COVID doesn’t have as nearly a significant impact on it. However, the article discusses how COVID’s impact on statistics and data science has been substantial due to their use in determining correlations in data as well as their role in the development of treatments. Because chemistry like all sciences involves statistical analysis, it has been indirectly affected by the COVID pandemic.
For starters, the article mentions how COVID has made people view data with much more scrutiny, requiring greater transparency and communication in order for everyone to be clear about what is happening. In chemistry, transparent communication of data and analysis is paramount in order for experimental results to be deemed legitimate, which shows that the article’s discussion of transparency and communication in data science is applicable to the study of chemistry. Additionally in regards to transparency, the article discusses how with COVID, communication of errors is of utmost importance in order to allow policymakers to make more informed decisions. In chemistry, experimental error is ubiquitous and must always be communicated when it is encountered, showing how COVID’s impacts on statistics form a major component of chemistry. Although chemistry itself is not highly affected by the COVID pandemic, many of its effects on other disciplines can be applied to experiments in chemistry.