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Request to Falsify Data Published In Chemistry Journal
New submitter Jim_Austin writes "A note inadvertently left in the 'supplemental information' of a journal article appears to instruct a subordinate scientist to fabricate data. Quoting: 'The first author of the article, "Synthesis, Structure, and Catalytic Studies of Palladium and Platinum Bis-Sulfoxide Complexes," published online ahead of print in the American Chemical Society (ACS) journal Organometallics, is Emma E. Drinkel of the University of Zurich in Switzerland. The online version of the article includes a link to this supporting information file. The bottom of page 12 of the document contains this instruction: "Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound, just make up an elemental analysis ..." We are making no judgments here. We don't know who wrote this, and some commenters have noted that "just make up" could be an awkward choice of words by a non-native speaker of English who intended to instruct his student to make up a sample and then conduct the elemental analysis. Other commenters aren't buying it.'"
None of the data talked about in the note was used in the final journal submission and the compound the author was referring to was what he claimed was a theoretical intermediate. I am leaning toward a misunderstanding in a hastily written note.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Many languages use only one verb for several uses of "make" and "do". English has some odd cases where "make" is used but, from a logical point of view, it would seem that "do" would be more appropriate, making translations more difficult. Thus, instead of "make up an analysis", one could easily imagine someone with a less than perfect grasp of english meaning "do an analysis"
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The beauty of (natural) science is that you can replicate the results.
Spoken from a true armchair POV. Trying to replicate results can be very expensive and time consuming. Furthermore, failure to replicate results does not immediately invalidate the original work, as there can be all kinds of legitimate explanations. Either party may have simply made a mistake, or there may be some critical variable that isn't yet recognized. Fraud in science is a very serious matter, a major impediment and expense, and unfortunately can be very difficult to prove. Therefore when it is found it should be punished severely.
...they went to publish it, realized they didn't have a supporting NMR, so he told his assistant to make one up.
Here's the rub... what that means to the assistant is, run an NMR; what it means to all the people who don't have a the education to understand what it means, or even what an NMR is, is that they can try to paint science as bad. You cant "make up" an NMR in that way, although you could substitute some other chemical and run the analysis... but why bother? Any lab with an NMR could check your work simply by running the correct NMR; and, running the correct chemical will take exactly as long, and exactly the same amount of effort.
This is basically people who don't have enough education somehow seeing a conspiracy in nothing. I swear, the human race is fucking pathetic sometimes.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
It's not Courier unless you have your browser set up to display Courier. It is a <tt> tag, which has a css style of "font-family:monospace;". Courier is monospaced, but so are typewriters. He is at least as correct as you are.
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