Tweet me so I will have been twatted
December 17th, 2009 by excimer
The egregious lack of comedic chemistry-themed Twitter accounts has forced me to action. I present to you the Fake IUPAC Gold Book, a Twit in the vein of the incomparable Fake AP Stylebook. (There’s nothing original in the world, so steal what you love.) It’s like a Y2K version of the IUPAC Gold Book, but with far more snark and slightly less potty humor.
More chemistry-related swearing can be found on my Twitter, as well as on Ψ*Ψ’s.
Merry Christkwanzahanudan from everyone here at CBC.
and happy Festivus!
Our most recent publications got accepted. It’s a Festivus miracle!
I’ll follow that!
Okay, so while I’ll admit I don’t totally understand all of the references, I have been L-ing quite literally OL at some of your Fake IUPAC Gold Book tweets, dude. It is both awesome and accessible to only-semi-nerds!
snicker…. you said twatted….
One is reminded of the NMR that solved sample vortex problems with a stationary NMR tube and its electromagnet horizontally spinning at 60 Hz. Alas, it’s mass precessed the Earth’s spin, bothering the interpretive dance class on the floor below (no pacemakers allowed).
Does anyone remember when Tenderbutton got comment-bombed by some guy calling Schultz’ research a fake? Well… take a look at this…
That’s a much more interesting story than we usually see. Although i don’t get why we’re supposed to feel sorry for the guy who got a tenure-track position based on faulty/fraudulent work, and who only retracted things after being denied tenure, or how the guy who was right in the first place only has a lecturer position in the UK.
It is perhaps typical that everyone is more concerned about a whistle-blower (albeit one that took extreme and in one case illegal methods) than false results, overpromoted careers, underpromoted careers and lost man-hours of labs that tried to replicate these methods in the first place.
I don’t care how much “faulty or fraudulent” work you’ve done, if that even was the case. It does not justify being blackmailed and threatened like he was. Noone deserves that. It is antithetical to scientific ethics. Whatever this blackmailer’s motive, several of his actions were unjustified. And this story is of note because of the extreme measures this person took.
The only two people who I think would have reason to steal the lab notebooks in question would be the blackmailer or Zhang. Tippmann would have wanted the notebook to confirm his doubts about Zhang’s work. Since Zhang was presumably already in Texas when it went missing, let’s suppose the blackmailer stole the notebooks. This is where the story doesn’t add up to me.
Zhang should have pressed charges in the blackmail, if he had clean hands in the matter. Suppose he recorded false positives in good faith. When the blackmailer contacted Zhang, he would have known that the blackmailer was bluffing and should have effectively called his bluff by pressing charges. However, despite “being scared to death,” he let the matter “blow over.”
The other possibility is that there were shenanigans in the notebook. If the blackmailer had the notebook, one might expect him/her to include this knowledge in the email to Zhang.
So the story to me supports the existence of shenanigans, but shenanigans imply that the blackmailer didn’t take the notebooks. Did the notebooks perhaps have an unfortunate accident at the hands of their author? Misreading data in good faith would look better down the road to tenure than fabrications, and this is the conclusion one would have to reach in the absence of the original notebooks.
Of course, Zhang’s decision not to press charges may not have been thought out as I described, which would invalidate all of the conclusions that follow. It is still hard to understand, though.
At best we’re getting only half the story now, which is at least more than the typical none-sides-of-the-story.
Here’s if you want to read up:
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/56190/
http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2009/08/07/jbc.M109.027409
I just read the article, this is a very strange set of occurrences.
It’s just a pity it will be buried in the Christmas/Festivus break…
Fucking A, man. Oh, poor, poor ex-prospective Nobel prize winner. Extortion, suicide threats, my ass.
Just admit it. You failed at managing the 50+ people lab.
Why they called it “building” after it has already built?
“Im being random.. “
Brilliant!