« Budgets and Revenues |
Main
| A Good Example of Phenotypic Screening »
November 14, 2012
Hexacyclinol Retracted. It Only Took Six Years.
Posted by Derek
Via Chemjobber's Twitter feed comes news of this: the formal retraction of the LaClair hexacyclinol synthesis.
The retraction has been agreed due to lack of sufficient Supporting Information. In particular, the lack of experimental procedures and characterization data for the synthetic intermediates as well as copies of salient NMR spectra prevents validation of the synthetic claims. The author acknowledges this shortcoming and its potential impact on the community
Potential? After six years? There were people taking their first undergraduate organic course when this controversy hit who are now thinking about how to start tying together their PhD dissertations. It seems that Angewandte Chemie is very loath to go the full-retraction route (there haven't been many), but that retraction notice doesn't bring up anything that wasn't apparent after the first ten minutes of reading the paper.
Update: Wavefunction isn't too impressed, either.
Comments (18)
+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Chemical News | The Scientific Literature
POST A COMMENT
- RELATED ENTRIES
- › Cancer: Back to N-of-One
- › Real Reactions, From Real Lab Notebooks
- › Not the Usual Morning Around Here
- › A Short Peptide And A Small Molecule
- › Super-Enhancers in Cell Biology: ENCODE's Revenge?
- › What's Translational Synthesis, Anyway?
- › A Bombing
- › Traffic and More Traffic
College chemistry, 1983
The 2002 Model
After 10 years of blogging. . .
1. eugene on November 14, 2012 11:18 AM writes...
Yes! Congratulations Andjewandte! You have taken a step towards becoming a better chemistry journal. The retraction policy should be changed so that it doesn't need approval of all the authors.
Permalink to Comment2. anon the II on November 14, 2012 11:19 AM writes...
What's interesting is what you see when you hit the little button that says:
Find more content written by: James J. La Clair
He's quite prolific before and since. How much of it is pure bunk? And how many James J. La Clair's are out there?
And has it really been 6 years? Seems like yesterday.
Permalink to Comment3. Curious Wavefunction on November 14, 2012 11:49 AM writes...
The retraction is of course warranted (and sets a new standard for the word "overdue") but I don't think it accurately reflects how bad the situation was. As I say on my blog, it's not just that the Supp Info was incomplete or the procedure was irreproducible, it's that the whole thing was essentially made up. The retraction does not reflect this in my opinion.
Permalink to Comment4. Lyle Langley on November 14, 2012 12:38 PM writes...
Meh. Justice delayed is justice denied.
Permalink to Comment5. Christophe Verlinde on November 14, 2012 2:20 PM writes...
Despite the retraction Dr La Clair's website at the Xenobe Research Institute still sounds a bit defiant.
see: http://www.xenobe.org/desoxohexacyclinol.html
Permalink to Comment6. Newbie on November 14, 2012 5:43 PM writes...
Wow, I just realized that XRI is a non-profit. The website states that the sole employee (him) does not take a salary and instead funnels most money (federally funded grants) towards collaborators. This just seems wrong to me on sooo many levels...
Permalink to Comment7. Ye Ould Sod on November 14, 2012 5:58 PM writes...
Xenobe Research Institute is not listed on Google maps anymore? Hmm
Permalink to Comment8. Chemjobber on November 14, 2012 6:49 PM writes...
XRI website says it moved out of Normal Heights. Shame, it's a neat neighborhood to have a lab in.
Permalink to Comment9. Anonny on November 14, 2012 9:47 PM writes...
What ever happened to the Bionic Brothers?
Permalink to Comment10. Quintus on November 15, 2012 12:12 AM writes...
Long Live the Bionic Brothers:-/
Permalink to Comment11. Jose on November 15, 2012 12:36 AM writes...
Last I heard they had rejoined the Borg Collective.
Permalink to Comment12. Judas on November 15, 2012 2:37 AM writes...
Just as Jesus died on the cross for our sins, so did La Clair die in Angewandte for our hype, malpractice and misconduct
Permalink to Comment13. Neuroskeptic on November 15, 2012 4:10 AM writes...
Looks like he successfully 'synthesized'... some data.
Permalink to Comment14. Matt on November 15, 2012 10:20 AM writes...
@Judas: Now that was funny. But your theo-analogy is all wrong, unless you are saying he's innocent? And does he then become the patron saint of frauds?
Permalink to Comment15. Judas on November 15, 2012 11:48 AM writes...
Matt, it all depends on your take on religion
Permalink to Comment16. ScientistSailor on November 15, 2012 12:28 PM writes...
@15. Science is my religion, do not question Science...
Permalink to Comment17. Hap on November 15, 2012 1:12 PM writes...
I'm not seeing any justice (or sacrifice) here at all - ACIEE published a paper from LaClair with almost no experimental details, except a sketchy NMR with the solvent peak moved (and, based on this, not just sketchy because of the solvent peak), and six years later, it gets pulled because, roughly, "no one likes papers with no experimentally verifiable data". I thought that that was the point of a paper in the first place, so giving "insufficient data" as if it were some sort of news flash and as a reason for retraction seems content-free.
Permalink to Comment18. Anon on November 15, 2012 1:48 PM writes...
15: If it's not science it's CRAP. And this is crap.
Permalink to Comment