NEWS OF THE W EEK
BUBBLE FUSION BURST FRAUD: Researcher engaged in
misconduct, committee finds
Taleyarkhan
LYNN FREENY/U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
A
PURDUE UNIVERSITY nuclear engineering professor, Rusi P. Taleyarkhan, who reported having achieved “tabletop” nuclear fusion by sonoluminescence, later falsely published claims that the study had been independently replicated, according to an academic committee investigating his research. The committee stressed that its investigation did not address whether Taleyarkhan doctored his original data. Whether or not this is the case is “the truly important question that remains unanswered,” says University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, chemistry professor Kenneth S. Suslick, a vocal critic of Taleyarkhan’s work and whose lab has attempted to replicate it without success. Taleyarkhan first stirred up controversy in 2002 when he was a scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He reported bombarding deuterated acetone with high-energy sound waves, causing bubbles to form, expand, and implode with great energy (Science 2002, 295, 1868). Taleyarkhan claimed he had observed characteristic radioactive particles that suggested deuterons
CONTEST FOR CHEMISTS N N Imipramine
T
H N O O
challenge to create method for predicting solubility
CH3
OH
H2N
COMPETITIONS: Journal issues
CH3
S N HO
Amoxicillin
Contestants must predict the solubilities of 32 compounds, including those above.
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HREE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE chemists are challenging their fellow scientists to develop a model for calculating the solubility of a wide range of compounds. “If you mention solubility, people won’t immediately say, ‘This is the forefront of science, and everyone should be interested in it,’ ” admits Jonathan M. Goodman, who, along with Antonio Llinàs and Robert C. Glen, published the challenge in the Journal of Chemical Information & Modeling (JCIM) (DOI: 10.1021/ ci800058v). “But, in fact, they should be thinking that” because solubility can make or break the performance of newly designed drugs, polymers, foods, and other products, Goodman says. Measuring solubility seems pretty straightforward, “but it’s actually terribly difficult to do right,” Goodman says. Time, temperature, pH, and other variables all affect solubility. As a result, solubility data in the WWW.C E N- ONLI NE .ORG
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had fused in the implosion. The possibility of a cheap, plentiful energy source captured worldwide attention and also generated skepticism. After several labs failed to replicate Taleyarkhan’s difficult experiments, criticism of his work grew more vocal. Then, in 2005, Purdue postdoctoral researcher Yiban Xu and graduate student Adam Butt reported that they’d succeeded in reproducing the findings (Nucl. Eng. Des. 2005, 235, 1317). Taleyarkhan then published a paper saying his results had been “independently confirmed” (Phys. Rev. Lett. 2006, 96, 034301). The committee investigating Taleyarkhan’s claims— made up of seven independent faculty and researchers from different institutions—has now determined that he was heavily involved in Xu’s project and that Taleyarkhan added Butt’s name to the paper despite the student’s small contribution. Taleyarkhan could not be reached for comment, but according to a Purdue University statement, he has 30 days to respond to the committee’s findings. Lawrence A. Crum, an engineering professor at the University of Washington and whose lab has also been unable to replicate Taleyarkhan’s work, says he believes Taleyarkhan got caught up in defending his results and lost his objectivity. Taleyarkhan’s results “would have been a wonderful scientific discovery,” Crum tells C&EN. “This is more a case of the psychological stresses of scientific research than it is of fraud and misconduct.”—ELIZABETH WILSON
literature aren’t particularly reliable. For instance, the reported solubility of caffeine has increased by two orders of magnitude over the past century, he says. Using a special titration technique developed in collaboration with Sirius Analytical Instruments of Forest Row, England, the Cambridge researchers have now determined the water solubilities of 100 druglike molecules, which they published in their JCIM article. The paper also lists 32 other molecules for which the researchers have measured, but not revealed, the solubility. Scientists who enter the competition can use the database of 100 compounds to develop a solubility model and test how well it works by using it to predict the solubilities of the other 32 compounds. A successful model could then be used to predict solubilities for many additional compounds. JCIM Editor William L. Jorgensen credits Glen, who is on JCIM’s advisory board, and University of New Mexico pharmacist Anton J. Hopfinger, the journal’s associate editor, with bringing the competition to fruition. The journal editors will assemble a team to evaluate entries, which are due on Sept. 15. The contestants who score best will describe their modeling techniques in future issues of the journal. What’s in it for the competitors? “Much as I would like to say huge amounts of money, what we’re looking at here is scientific glory,” according to Goodman.— SOPHIE ROVNER
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