SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
and our students,” Fukuyama explains. Fukuyama tells C&EN that after hearing from Smith in November, he and Yokoshima scrutinized the supporting information of the papers Smith mentioned. They found that there were some unnaturally “noiseless” baselines in portions of the After a SERIES OF CORRECTIONS, Japanese chemists NMR spectra. discuss assumptions, trust, and reputation “We asked our students if they intenBETHANY HALFORD, C&EN BOSTON tionally deleted some peaks,” Fukuyama says. “They all admitted that they used the ‘Delete Peak’ feature of the JEOL NMR LAST NOVEMBER, Tohru Fukuyama got Japan’s University of Tokyo and Rice Unispectrometer to remove, in most cases, mithe kind of e-mail that every principal versity, in Texas. In the Japanese system, nor solvent peaks.” investigator dreads. Amos B. Smith III, principal investigators sometimes have The manipulated spectra look very editor-in-chief of the journal Organic Letassociate and assistant professors who help clean, and the manipulation is not obvious ters, had written to say the journal had been them run the lab. In the Fukuyama lab, this until you compare the doctored and the tipped off about some “questionable secposition is held by Satoshi Yokoshima. “Alundoctored spectra. To see evidence of the tions” in nuclear magnetic resonance specmost all of our recent research accomplishmanipulation in some spectra, it’s necestra published by Fukuyama’s lab. ments are the results of close collaboration sary to enlarge the baseline by up to 800%. Smith went on to explain that he’d had between myself, Professor Yokoshima, “My impression is that some of my stuthe journal’s data analyst look dents who deleted minor peaks into the matter, and the anadid not take seriously the idea Br TRACE EVIDENCE The O lyst found irregularities in the that the spectroscopic data are spectrum of an intermediate H O spectra in question along with important proof of the comNH en route to lysergic acid was others from another Organic pounds’ purity,” Fukuyama says. manipulated to remove peaks H Letters paper from Fukuyama’s “I myself have never manipuN showing traces of water and ethyl lab. Although Smith didn’t say lated the spectroscopic data or O acetate. Evidence of these can S it outright, the implication was even dreamed that my students O be seen in the spectrum from the clear: The spectra appeared to would do such a stupid thing.” correction. have been doctored to remove Yokoshima says they put certain peaks—a no-no for scipriority on getting clean spectra entific publications. to demonstrate sample purity. Lysergic acid The problem seemed rampant “We have told our students intermediate in just these two papers, with that the NMR spectra should Smith suggesting that no fewer not contain peaks of residual than 28 spectra in their supsolvents or impurities for pubporting information may have lication. Our comments and possibly been manipulated. But the limited machine time seem for Fukuyama, this was just the to have forced them to use the tip of the iceberg. In the weeks ‘Delete Peak’ function.” that followed, he would also hear from editors at the Journal of the THIS KIND OF spectra maAmerican Chemical Society and nipulation does not appear to Angewandte Chemie with similar be isolated to the Fukuyama lab. concerns. As of C&EN press Masahisa Nakada, a chemistry time, NMR spectra manipulaprofessor at Japan’s Waseda tions had prompted Fukuyama University, recently published to publish corrections for 11 diffive similar corrections in Orferent publications. A few more, ganic Letters. Nakada tells C&EN he says, are on the way. he checks every spectrum before As a principal investigator, sending them for publication, Fukuyama is his laboratory’s “but the manipulation was not visionary and leader—dreamobvious in the edited spectra.” ing up new synthetic schemes Like Fukuyama, Nakada and mentoring students in their reexamined the spectra after careers as chemists. He is curhearing from Smith and conrently a professor at Nagoya fronted his students. “I have University, in Japan, although he told my students that the NMR has also been on the faculty of spectra should not contain ADAPTED FROM ORG. LETT.
CLEANING UP THE RECORD
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peaks of residual solvents or impurities for publication, but they used the ‘Delete Peak’ function probably because they felt a pressure to present spectra that are perfect within a limited time.” The corrections, Nakada notes, do not change the scientific conclusions of the papers. The ability to remove peaks is a common function on several different types of NMR processing software, and it’s trivial to use, says Ivan Keresztes, director of Cornell University’s NMR facility. What’s more, he says, Photoshop and other software programs can also be used to smooth out spectra. “In this day and age, it’s easy to delete peaks that you don’t want to be there,” he says. THE CHEMISTRY community, Keresztes
says, has a problem similar to that of the editors who create the covers of magazines such as Elle and Vogue. “We have an unrealistic expectation of what an NMR spectrum should look like,” he says. “There’s a pressure to present spectra that are perfect when, in fact, spectra are rarely ever perfect.” “I did not even think that students would use the ‘Delete Peak’ function,” Yokoshima tells C&EN. Therefore, he says, it never occurred to him to tell them not to use it. “It was our fault not to scrutinize every spectrum in the supporting information before sending them out for publication,” Fukuyama adds, “but my staff members and I simply believed that all of my students are honest.” As soon as they learned of the manipulations, he says, “we told our students never to do such a stupid thing. I can assure you that we will never send out manuscripts containing manipulated spectra again.” Yokoshima says he and Fukuyama heard from many colleagues after the series of corrections came out in Organic Letters. “Some professors told us that we should not trust students,” he says. “But having good relationships with coworkers and students is important to advance projects, and we want to trust them. From these NMR problems, we learned that it is rather risky to give 100% unconditional credibility to every student.” “While the corrections somewhat lower the yields of the reactions involved, they do not change the conclusions in the papers,” Fukuyama notes. Still, both Fukuyama and Yokoshima worry that this incident will tarnish their reputations as scientists. “We cannot do much about what happened in the past,” Fukuyama says. “All we have to do is to make our best effort to achieve good science and regain trust from the members of the chemical community.” ◾
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