Comments on: 2009: A Year for Faked Science

By: milkshake

milkshake — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:40:36 +0000

Wishful thinking happens even in the best families. In this case the origin of irreproducibility was easy to figure out, and the case was not as atrocious as the “NaH -catalyzed oxidation of alcohols”. I think it is good it was handled in this way – a honorable self-retraction. The re-examined Bolm results are actually valuable because they shows that the Cu loadings can be extremely low and Cu works in presence of huge quantity of Fe(III) oxidant, hence de-oxygenating the reaction is not really as critical for success of arylation.

By: phosgene

phosgene — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:04:31 +0000

Carston Bolm’s Fe catalysis reports have been questioned since ‘04-’05 when he first started reporting this. Many Buchwald alum. called bullshit on what Bolm was doing. Especially since some people in Buchwald’s group tried to use as high purity iron as they could get and got no reactivity. It was even noted that trace impurities in spatulas and stirbars were enough to catalyze reactions. It got bad enough that Bolm sent someone from Germany to MIT to conduct experiments in front of Buchwald’s lab for replication purposes, and of course, no replication. That Angewandte paper this year could have gone a lot worse for Bolm, if Buchwald had wanted it to.

By: piratechem

piratechem — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:17:50 +0000

also: heres how to do it right, if you must use NaH

http://www.thieme-connect.com/ejournals/abstract/synlett/doi/10.1055/s-0029-1219172

By: KZ

KZ — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 03:37:50 +0000

I realize I shouldn’t respond to these things, but where on earth did you get that last bit? Last I checked, the excise tax would apply to plans over 23k, not 8.5. Not that it has any relevance to the discussion, so whatever.

On the bright side, I think we’ll look back to this year as the first where the chemistry blogging community had a big hand in exposing all these things, no?

By: excimer

excimer — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:40:59 +0000

Science has a power structure just like any other institution. As long as humans are doing the work it’s going to be flawed. But as far as institutions go, I think science is better-managed than most.

By: J-bone

J-bone — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:54:09 +0000

Science is a severely overrated publication. There’s plenty of marginal science that gets published in it, only a major debacle like this one causes the editors to admit they don’t treat peer review the way they should.

One more example of why I believe the current peer review process is nothing more than politicking between important people (or people who think they’re important) rather than recognition of fundamentally sound science.

By: Adam L.

Adam L. — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 15:24:42 +0000

Amen, brother.

I should have gotten in on all of that cheating – at least I could have gotten a paper out!

By: unbalanced reaction

unbalanced reaction — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 02:37:53 +0000

Woohoo! Cheers for killin’ bitches and not dying!

By: excimer

excimer — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 18:26:27 +0000

Acta Cryst isn’t that bad, by all accounts. It is what it is- a place to put crystal structures. And crystallographers check the submissions. I just don’t see the point of faking submissions there. Who benefits from it? Is the science situation in China really so dire that publishing in menial (but useful) journals like Acta Cryst is a means to promotion there? Or by publishing crap like that NaH paper? It seems to be that way, more and more. (btw, the PI on that NaH paper appeared to do a postdoc with Katz at Columbia, so pedigree doesn’t appear to be the issue.)

And China’s supposed to be the Next Big Thing in science. If they want to be, they have to start enforcing ethics more rigorously.

By: The Curious Chemistry Graduate

The Curious Chemistry Graduate — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 09:04:35 +0000

Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize