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Published online 4 December 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2007.341
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Where have I seen that before?
103-year-old chemical reaction pops up again.
There was something strangely familiar about results published in two high-profile chemistry journals recently: as one researcher has since pointed out, they accidentally replicated an experiment that was done more than a century ago. The resulting ruckus has highlighted how accidental chemical conclusions can get past peer review, and stands as a reminder of how easy it is to miss similarities to old results.
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Thousands of papers are getting published everyday. It might be a little difficult for researchers, especially newcomers, to trace every piece of previous contributions even in a very specific field. As young graduates, we can only read more and learn more.
When I was a grad student in chemistry there was an often repeated saying that "a day in the library is worth a week in the lab". In many cases that may be an understatement. Although it may seem laborious to modern students to use a print index like "Chemical Abstracts", it is worth remembering that a lot of science was done before the digital age, and much of that is still relevant. In this case a complete literature review could have saved embarrassment as well as time. It also presents an example that professors might use to point out to their students the importance of thorough literature work .
The mentions of Chemical Abstracts both in the article and in the comments are interesting, but not necessarily on target. Chemical Abstracts is not "a database of all chemical reactions ever published" as stated in the article. It is both more and less than that. The database includes all chemistry-related publications (whether they treat reactions, properties, theory, etc.) but it only goes back to 1907--so it would not have helped these researchers. The electronic database now goes all the way back to the beginning of the index, so one need not consult print volumes if one has access to the full electronic database.
This incident brings to mind my tme in a technical school, as a completing student I was to pick out a project to research and formulate a new design, or at least an improvement. I offered my intent to the "instructor" and had it accepted. Only to find out at a later time the "instructor" had known about a product that did what I had projected that was new to the field. My point is, even when one trys to research an idea you can be lead astray. from that point on I have always done my own research on design projects.