Last month, we broke the news that Emory chemist Craig Hill and colleagues were retracting two papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and one in Science. At the time, the Science move was pending, but now the journal has officially pulled the article, titled “A Late-Transition Metal Oxo Complex: K7Na9[O=PtIV(H2O)L2], L = [PW9O34]9–”.
The notice reads:
On the basis of new experiments (NMR studies with 17 O-labeled compounds and varying pH, additional x-ray crystallography, and others), the authors of the Report “A Late-Transition Metal Oxo Complex: K7Na9[O=PtIV(H2O)L2], L = [PW9O34]9–” (1) have concluded that the full body of data does not support structural assignment of the title compound as a terminal platinum oxo. As a result, we retract the publication. The assignment is clarified in (2).
Reference two is a new paper in the journal Inorganic Chemistry, “Revisiting the Polyoxometalate-Based Late-Transition-Metal-Oxo Complexes: The “Oxo Wall” Stands.” As we noted last month, the Science paper has been cited 98 times.
Those interested in Hill’s explanation of what happened with the studies can read our interview with him here.
It would be interesting to learn if any of the 98 publications that cited Hill’s Science paper reached a similarly erroneous conclusion.
Interesting point, chirality… If they were theoretical chemistry papers “proving” that the non-tungsten compounds exist, they can just use “improved methods” to prove that they do not exist…
“Everyone” who was in his field knew that the results were basically faked. Messy data interpreted in the way that made the results appear fantastic – and they were just that. The papers provided smirks for many years, and I am sort of sad to see that insider joke is no longer available.
Fake implies fraud. Misinterpretation of spectra implies sloppiness. Although I am a bit at a loss to explain how one fakes an X-ray or neutron diffraction much less how one can misinterpret one. The crystallographers I have dealt with have been extremely anal concerning the quality of the crystals given to them but if one is more concerned about number of structures put out per year well . . . .
Is there more info on that? Many comments say that the he acted in good faith.