Turns out I don’t know a thing
Analytical chemistry is about making tools to measure stuff to see what it’s made of. Tools are based on reproducible observations of properties that can be reliably correlated with chemical composition and arrangement. (Wish I could find the quote from Kolthoff I’m thinking of.)
Apparently, some kinds of analytical-physical chemistry (with a heavy dose of biophysics) take a page from the organic playbook… if it happens once, write a paper on it. And then they go further… if it sorta-happens once, write three papers and a painful application for a huge grant to investigate further. Then run around convincing bone researchers, spectroscopists, and anyone else who’ll hold still that (1) the results are real and (2) can’t be gotten any other way and (3) answer some pressing problem that’s puzzled the world for decades.
And then… more data shows that that nifty effect he wanted to tell Nature about may just be from doing the experiment wrong in the first place. And then… the earlier papers have to get retracted. And then… no grant. Oops.
Big meeting tomorrow to figure out whether it’s all real or not.
