"Cantrill-ing" Hits the NY Times

Apparently, U.S. Senator John Walsh has been accused of plagiarising a final assignment for his Master's degree. And how did the New York Times cover this story? Why, by literally "cantrilling" the paper!

Source: NY Times

Remember us all when you're famous, Stu.

WWWTP? Travel Edition

JLC hit the road a few weeks back, and collected a bit of chemical mayhem along the way!

First, a follow-on to a strange beauty products ad used by Kiehl's. First noticed by ChemBark and Stu Cantrill, I've now managed to find the full structure in (photonegative?) a completely different airport:

I'm willing to take bets on what readers think Kiehl's might be trying to draw; I don't have access to SciFinder until tomorrow morning. First blush? Looks like a strange, mangled version of digoxigenin, which I certainly wouldn't want in my face creams!

Second, a comparison of two toothpastes: one manufactured in the ol' US of A, and the other in Thailand. Same brand. Notice anything different?

Different fluoride sources! I hadn't realized that the FDA allows MFP, or even stannous fluoride, in place of sodium fluoride in toothpaste. Huh.

"Everything is Catalytic," Scientists Claim

For Immediate Release
4/1/14

Grand Rapids, MI: Troublesome chemical reactions? Try adding a pinch of...anything.

Reporting today in the journal ACS Catalysis, researchers have discovered that every chemical element or molecular mixture catalyzes reactions when present in trace quantities. "As I've told all my students, catalytic inspiration + 10 equivalents perspiration produces beautiful molecules," remarked Scripps Professor Phil Baran. "I just never mentioned that I used drops of actual sweat!"

"Brilliant!" remarked Stuart Cantrill, Chief Editor of Nature Chemistry. "Chemists were always running reactions in beer and coffee, mostly to show off. The trick now will be discovering which obscure thing goes into what reaction."

"Indeed," remarked Chemistry World's Neil Withers.

As shown by the graphic abstract (above), scientists at the forefront of catalytic research often try just about anything they can get their hands on. "I wouldn't have believed it, myself, but the data convinced me," commented celebrated catalysis scion John Hartwig. "Our lab has already added ppm quantities of dryer lint, nose hairs, and soy sauce to asymmetric Ir allylations, with fantastic yields and high ee."

N.B. - Calls to Dow and DuPont were not returned by press time

Note to the humorless: This is fake. Happy April Fools' Day. Please don't sue me.

Podcast: Chemjobber, Stu, and SAO Discuss Plagiarism (Part 1)

Way back in February, Chemjobber and I sat down with Stuart Cantrill, Chief Editor of Nature Chemistry, for a chat about plagiarism in scientific publishing. We had so much fun talking that the recording ballooned into a 2-h epic podcast; I didn't know where to start editing!
Mea culpa - the conversation languished on my desktop, and I made excuses each week not to get it done.

Finally, Part 1 of the CJ / SC / SAO "Epic Podcast" arrives!



0:07 - Special guests
1:29 - Stu's day job: What happens to papers submitted to Nature Chem?
4:29 - How do you define #1?
8:19 - "Actually, actually, actually..."
10:42 - Journals already use plagiarism-checking software!?!
12:10 - (and get way too many submissions)
16:22 - Cantrill, automated.
18:47 - Who bears the cost of plagiarized papers?
22:50 - CJ's curious: What happens to the person caught copying?
28:12 - The self-correcting scientific literature
28:58 - Bloggers: A small group of people who care too much...
30:17 - Why publish or perish? Shouldn't it be quality, not quantity?
32:09 - Indexes (Indices?)
33:18 - Opening the door to Hour 2...

P.S. - If you need a primer, the earlier podcast CJ and I refer to is here.

Open-and-Shut Case

Dr. Shawn Burdette tweeted up the chem-blognoscenti earlier tonight to ask about some "funny business" between two papers. The first (JACS 2009, Pierre) predates the second (Chem. Eur. J. 2013, Yan) by about 4 years, and yet their "Figures 1" both look strangely, well, similar...

Well, OK, folks who play in the same sandbox sometimes use the same shovel, right? Maybe the 2013 paper became so enamored of its predecessor that it couldn't help itself.

But then, I started through the text. Since I didn't have my pink highlighter handy to cantrill them (sorry, Stu!), I decided just to clip out phrases I thought sounded Déjà vu-ish:

Pierre (p. 1): "Time-gated luminescence imaging presents an elegant solution to the problem of background luminescence by setting a time delay between the excitation pulse and the luminescence detection, thereby allowing the luminescence of the media to decay before measuring that of the probe. This technique, however, requires chemical probes with luminescence lifetimes significantly longer than that of the biological medium."


Yan (p. 1): "Time-gated luminescence imaging presents an elegant solution to the problem of background luminescence by setting a time delay between the excitation pulse and luminescence detection; this allows the luminescence of the media to decay before that of the probe is measured. However, this technique requires chemical probes with luminescence lifetimes significantly longer than that of the biological medium."

Or how about this?

Pierre (p. 2): "Notably, the observed selectivity cannot result solely from selective binding of K+ by the diaza-18-crown-6. The selectivities of the lariat ether for K+ over Na+ and Ca2+ in anhydrous alcohol are barely 5- to 10-fold.(7) Tb derivatives of these ethers also demonstrate poor selectivity (4-fold)."

Yan (p. 3): "Notably, the observed selectivity cannot result solely from selective binding of potassium(I) by the diaza-18-crown-6. The selectivities of the lariat ether for potassium(I) over sodium(I) and calcium(II) in solution are barely five- to tenfold.[16] Tb derivatives of these ethers also demonstrate poor selectivity (fourfold)."

One more for posterity:

Pierre (p. 1): "...the flexible structure of the ligand results in an overall large separation between the Tb ion and its sensitizing azaxanthone, resulting in weak Tb luminescence the aryl ether, thereby locking the complex in a conformation where the antenna is significantly closer to the Tb center. Consequently, the efficiency of energy transfer from the azaxanthone to the Tb and the resulting luminescence from the complex are increased."

Yan (buried in the Figure 1 legend!): "...The flexible structure of the ligand results in an overall large separation between the Tb center and its sensitizing antenna, BP, resulting in weak Tb luminescence [snip] The locking conformation causes the antenna to be significantly closer to the Tb center. Consequently, the efficiency of energy transfer from BP to Tb and the luminescence from the complex are increased..."

Cherry on top? The 2013 authors bury the 2009 authors' paper in Ref. 14d. Sigh.

Well, kids, I think we have our answers. While I don't have any skin in the "fluorescent K+ sensors" game, I also abhor unfair play. To this end, I've sent a cheerful email to the Editorial staff of both journals, and will print here any response I obtain.

Thanks for playing!
-SAO

Update (1/23/13): CJ adds his thoughts and a pretty (damning) picture.

Turning Over Rocks, Drawing Lines in the Sand

When I flip over a rock in the woods, I'm never quite sure what I'll find. Bugs? Fungi? A gold coin? (maybe someday...).

Turning over rocks in the dense forest of the chemblogosphere gets complicated quickly. My response to this week's chemistry-opposed Washington Post article included a barb near the end: 'correctly' stating the number of elements in the Periodic Table to counter a WaPo assertion:

"...there are 92 naturally-occurring elements, and a total of 118 spots (not all filled!) in the Periodic Table. I didn't have to Google it, because I took middle-school chemistry."

Now, of all the things I've written on this blog, I'd hardly expect this to seem controversial. And yet, within a few minutes, Stu Cantrill had chimed in, favoring 94...then 98. Blog of the Isotopes posted next, saying:

"The question is not at all easy to answer.  It depends what you mean by naturally-occurring.  I think the common meaning is "can be dug up from the ground but didn't come from man-made sources such as weapons fallout."  So, how many is that?"

Although the author didn't commit to a number, he seemed to lean towards the 94-98 that Stu had claimed. Other websites (WiseGeek, Yahoo! Answers) claim anywhere from 88 to 117!

Prof. Per-Ola Norrby weighed in via Twitter; originally favoring 90, he increased his bid to 92, and dug up primordial elements, which geophysicists peg at 84. Most recently, frequent JLC commenter gippgig argued:

"Make that 94 elements, 88 of which occur in significant amounts"

84? 88? 90? 92? 94? 117? That's a lot of different numbers for something we theoretically "know." After a while, I decided to update my original post with a dreaded tilde: the half-baked punctuation mark of the undecided.

Why rehash this rather academic debate? Because it's really important! The conversation illustrates the value of scientific discourse, where individuals find facts, bring them back to the table, and everyone weighs the information. Skeptical eyes inform conclusions - do I think that that "fact" holds water? Sam Arbesman wrote an entire book on this topic, The Half-Life of Facts, showing that research uncovers its share of "inviolable" truths we discover later just aren't so.

So we draw lines in the sand. Include radioactive isotopes? Include stellar chemistry? What's your detection limit? Measurement technique? Where's your cutoff? How many atoms?

An old joke - ask ten organic chemists what "large scale" means, and you'll get ten answers. The 2012 Chemistry Nobel Prize blurred whole fields; where do chemistry and biology divide? Do they? For my part, I'm settled in on 94 'natural' elements for now, but I could be swayed depending on further data.

Perhaps most importantly, I again recommend chemistry class to all Middle Schoolers, painful or no. Thinking through these types of problems really helps you grow, and isn't that what school is for?

Friday Fun: Chem Swords

As Stuart Cantrill pointed out on Twitter this morning, today's xkcd comic hits all the right receptors for chemistry geeks:

xkcd #1114, c. Randall Munroe

So, in four short panels, we have jokes about Sb and Ac, role-playing games, LoTR, even an olde tyme word for "spooky." Perfect!

Here are my humble attempts*

- I forged a blade from iron oxide, but it just rusted away.

Lion-O
Source: Ted Wolf / Rankin-Bass

- Next, I made a silicon dioxide scimitar; it shattered like glass.

- My 'Einsteinium Excalibur' shrunk every three weeks.

-  I have high hopes for my Osmium Sword of Omens; it roars, and dihydroxylates everything it touches!

- Magnesium Masamune: Victor Grignard's house blade.

- The neon lightsaber? Went over like a Pb balloon.

*I tossed some of these on Twitter before I sketched out the post. Please don't "Lehrerize" me for it! (Sounded better than "Breslowize")