Update, 4/3/14 - On a hunch, I looked through major publishers' databases for more recent Fukuyama corrections sharing a specific author's name. Found this (Chartelline C) at ACIEE, alleging "[im]properly processed NMR spectra." Since this author published >40 papers with Fukuyama, more may be coming.
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| ACIEE, 2014 (above) and 2012 (below) |
An astute commenter has
clued me in to the latest round of corrections coming from the Fukuyama research group (
see 1,
2,
3,
4). Targets affected include lyconadins A-C, ecteinascidin 743, and mersicarpine, and publication dates range from
2010-2013. This time, they're in
JACS which, to my knowledge, does not (yet) employ a full-time
data analyst like
Organic Letters does.
The corrections read much the same as the
last raft, released two months prior in
Org. Lett., alleging spectral manipulation for multiple intermediates and final molecules, including removal of solvent peaks. Here's one example showing 13C spectra* for intermediate
7, from the synthesis of lyconadin A:
 |
| Original spectrum (2011)* |
 |
| Corrected Spectrum (2014)* |
Clearly, there's a bunch of "stuff" in
7 that had to be digitally removed by one of the authors. And this is just one compound; each paper contains several such examples of "improperly manipulated" spectra (
direct quote!).
So, what's going on here? I have a theory, although it's a bit of hearsay since I'm not privy to the inner workings of either journal. However, the astute reader will note one author whose name appears on nine of the ten corrected papers from Feb-April...uh-oh.
Was there a bad apple in the Fukuyama lab? More details as I have them.
*Apologies for the different shading, due to my computer and not their SI files.
