More chemistry scandals
As pointed out by an anonymous reader, more retractions are shaking the chemistry world. These are for papers by Prof. Sames at Columbia about Ru-catalyzed C-H activation. Check out these blogs for more details:
blog.tenderbutton.com
paulbracher.com
Note added on March 16: Now it’s also in the New York Times
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This paper looks really fishy, I went over the supplemental info and the NMR’s are blurry scanned “photocopies” of the allegedly original spectra. This is suspicious because you should be able to include the digital version of the NMR file, which is much harder to “alter” and would be regarded as much trustworthy than a blurry printout. In this case it does seem as if this was not simply an honest mistake but more likely a desperate attempt to please a demanding advisor. The graduate school community should definitely sit down and re-evaluate how much pressure is acceptable to put on the students. If you tell them: “Either you get this compound or you will never graduate” something will eventually give and, in some instances, what gives is the ethics of the scientist under pressure.
Comment by Sergio Granados — 2006-3-21 @ 1:45 pm
Gotcha great blog going on here.
Comment by Beverly — 2006-3-26 @ 3:38 pm