Supposedly discovered discovery

Today it comes as no surprise that chemical reactions can oscillate spontaneously—such reactions have become a standard demonstration in chemistry classes, and you may have seen one yourself. (For recipes, see Winfree (1980).) But in Belousov s day, his discovery was so radical that he couldn t get his work published. It was thought that all solutions of chemical reagents must go monoton-ically to equilibrium, because of the laws of thermodynamics. Belousov s paper was rejected by one journal after another. According to Winfree (1987b, p. 161), one editor even added a snide remark about Belousov s supposedly discovered discovery to the rejection letter. 

Now, then [continued Berzelius], it is clear that the columbic acid of Mr. Hatchett, having been composed of oxide of tantalum and tungstic acid, which communicated to it a part of its specific properties, it is clear, I say, that Mr. Hatchett shares the discovery of tantalum in almost the same manner as MM. Fourcroy and Vauquelin share with Mr. Tennant the honor of having discovered osmium ( Thomson s System, Ed. IV, Vol. 1, p. 200), and I suppose that you will not refuse to render the same justice to the work of the Swede Ekeberg that you have just rendered to the Englishman Tennant. ... 

Since the properties of erythronium closely resembled those which Fourcroy had ascribed to the recently discovered metal chromium, del Rio lost confidence in the importance of his discovery and concluded that his supposed new element was, after all, nothing but chromium (11). In a note to his translation of Kars ten s Mineralogical Tables he wrote (7, 9,12) .. . but, knowing that chromium also gives by evaporation red or yellow salts, I believe that the brown lead is a yellow oxide of chromium, combined with excess lead also in the form of the yellow oxide. ... 

This discovery was soon followed by the isolation of barium, strontium, and calcium. By analogy, it was further inferred that all amorphous powders—alumina, magnesia, etc.—possessing similar properties, were metallic oxides. As a result, when a new earth is now discovered, chemists believe, by faith, that it is the oxide of a metal even in cases where the supposed metal has never been isolated. 

Reflect and Apply Suppose that a prokaryotic organism that contains both chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b has been discovered. Gomment on the evolutionary implications of such a discovery. 

Discovery.—In 1797 L. N. Vauquelin undertook to prove the chemical identity of the emerald and beryl, -which had already been suspected by Haiiy, and in the course of his analytical research, discovered that a portion of the precipitate which had previously been supposed to be aluminium hydroxide, was thrown out of its solution in potassium hydroxide on boiling. He also found that this new hydroxide was soluble in ammonium carbonate, formed no alum and was in many ways different from aluminum. These observations led him to announce in a paper read before the Institute on Peb. 14, 1898 (1798 i), the discovery of a new earth. ... 

The chemical composition of zeolites may be quite complicated, and they may possess a large variety of different structures. This has turned into a myriad of names for zeolites, where each material, natural or synthetic, claimed or supposed to be different in terms of structure, composition and/or properties has received a specific and arbitrary name. In addition to mineral names (such as faujasite, mordenite, natrolite, etc.) there is a vast variety of names for synthetic materials. Very frequently, synthetic zeolites are named with a trivial code related to the claimed inventor or owner of patent protected rights followed by a sequential number. For instance, ZSM-5, SSZ-24 and RUB-13 are zeolites discovered by researchers at Mobil, Chevron and Ruhr University Bochum, respectively. There are also zeolites with other names, such as zeolite Beta (despite its discovery by Mobil researchers), silicalite (a pure Si02 version of ZSM-5) and Theta-1 (discovered by BP researchers). 

Berzelius gave valuable assistance to workers in his laboratory who discovered lithium and vanadium. Joze Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva (Vila de Santos, nr. Rio de Janeiro, 13 June 1763-Niteroi (Bay of Rio de Janeiro), 6 August 1838), the famous Brazilian statesman, in a journey in Europe discovered in Sweden two minerals which he named petalite and spodumene." Petalite was rediscovered in the island of Uto by E. T. Svedenstjerna. Analyses of petalite and spodumene, which were supposed to be potash minerals, gave puzzling results, and although Hisinger in January 1818 had practically solved the mystery, it was cleared up by the discovery in Berzelius s laboratory of a new alkali metal by Arfvedson. ... 

H. Goldschmidt discovered a second dioxime of benzil, but little notice was taken of this until the discovery of the Beckmann rearrangement (1886, see p. 833). Beckmann discovered a second isomer, isobenzaldoxime, of ben-zaldoxime, and the two modifications were supposed to be ... 

Suppose that you discovered a new, highly effective, corrosion-inhibiting molecule, but when your discovery is added to paint it tends to make the coating brittle. What would manufacturers of paint have to consider to decide to purchase your product to add to their paints ... 

Suppose a chemist synthesizes an analytical reagent that is believed to be entirely new. The compound is studied using a spectrometric method and gives a value of 104 (normally, most of our results will be cited in carefully chosen units, but in this hypothetical example purely arbitrary units can be used). From suitable reference books, the chemist finds that no compoimd previously discovered has yielded a value of more than 100 when studied by the same method under the same experimental conditions. The question thus naturally arises, has our chemist really discovered a new compound The answer to this question evidently lies in the degree of reliance that we can place on that experimental value of 104. What errors are associated with it If further study indicates that the result is correct to within 2 (arbitrary) units, i.e. the true value probably lies in the range 104 2, then a new material has probably been discovered. If, however, investigations show that the error may amount to 10 units (i.e. 104 10), then it is quite likely that the true value is actually less than 100, in which case a new discovery is far from certain. So a knowledge of the experimental errors is crucial (in this case as in every other) to the proper interpretation of the results. In statistical terms this example would involve the comparison of the experimental result (104) with a reference value (100) this topic is studied in detail in Chapter 3. 

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