munich

Guido Zadel, a former chemist at the University of Bonn, who has been accused of committing scientific fraud four years ago, is suing the Land (state) of Nordrhein-Westfalen for DM437,000 (US$242,000) compensation.

Zadel's lawyer claims that, as a direct result of the accusations, he has been unable to find a suitable post, and that the sum represents the amount a chemist of his age and qualifications could expect to earn in industry over four years.

Zadel is also seeking DM200,000 in damages from a former co-worker who has said that he saw Zadel manipulating experiments. Zadel is challenging a decision by the university to withdraw his doctorate.

Zadel had claimed to have discovered that a static magnetic field could, even without the use of polarized light, induce ‘chiral synthesis’ — the stereo-selective synthesis of optically active organic substances — a discovery that would have had enormous significance for the pharmaceutical industry. Doubts soon arose about his claims, however, as no other research group was able to reproduce them (see Nature 382, 104; 1996). Zadel admits that his methods were “far from being mature”. But he rejects charges that some failed experiments had not been properly recorded, and denies scientific misconduct.

Part of his defence is that, although his own paper was withdrawn soon after publication, two subsequent papers by other researchers appear to provide some theoretical support for his ideas. Both conclude that chiral synthesis in a magnetic field is in principle possible.

But researchers at the University of Bonn's Institute of Organic Chemistry have no plans for further work on the topic. “The common opinion is that chiral synthesis in a static magnetic field is impossible in practice,” says Karl-Werner Glombitza, dean of natural sciences.