Make Up the Elemental Analysis: An Update

Chemistry Blog has more on the incident picked up first at ChemBark and noted here yesterday. This rapidly-becoming-famous case has the Supporting Information file of a paper published at Organometallics seemingly instructing a co-author to "make up" an elemental analysis to put in the manuscript.

Now the editor of the journal (John Gladysz of Texas A&M) has responded to Chemistry Blog as follows:

Wednesday 07 August
Dear Friends of Organometallics,

Chemical Abstracts alerted us to the statement you mention,which was overlooked during the peer review process, on Monday 05 August. At that time, the manuscript was pulled from the print publication queue. The author has explained to us that the statement pertains to a compound that was ”downgraded” from something being isolated to a proposed intermediate. Hence, we have left the ASAP manuscript on the web for now. We are requiring that the author submit originals of the microanalysis data before putting the manuscript back in the print publication queue. Many readers have commented that the statement reflects poorly on the moral or ethical character of the author, but the broad “retribution” that some would seek is not our purview. As Editors, our “powers” are limited to appropriate precautionary measures involving future submissions by such authors to Organometallics, the details of which would be confidential (ACS Ethical Guidelines, http://pubs.acs.org/page/policy/ethics/index.html). Our decision to keep the su...

Source: In the Pipeline - August 8, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: The Scientific Literature Source Type: blogs