Friday, February 13, 2009

La Clair hexacyclinol, again

A few years ago James La Clair published a synthesis of hexacyclinol, and it was immediately met with skepticism. Rychnovsky studied the NMR data for the natty-P and others and via comparison proposed a new structure, that was eventually made by Porco and proved to be both the compound in question, and have the Rychnovsky proposed structure.

La Clair commented in Nature: "La Clair now says that he and Porco may have made two different molecules that happen to have very similar NMR spectra."

As far as I know La Clair has not done any more in this area, to defend himself or otherwise, which is odd considering he claimed to have more than a gram of the material in question on hand.

Today in Org. Lett. a paper came out specifically examining this problem of the different compound-same NMR spectra issue.


Where 2 is the Rychnovsky proposed correct structure, and 1 is the original La Clair claimed structure.

This seems to me to be a lot like backhanding La Clair right in the face while calling him a bitch.

That and flogging a dead horse.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

JJ is such a douche. I can't believe that he continues to show his face in public after receiving such a public bitch-slapping. I love this paper. It basically says that if JJ made an oopsie and obtained a different product, he should have known better. Man, this guy pisses me off.

person 1 said...

This is retarded. Do we really need a paper that says "Hey, two really complicated structures, which are different and isomeric, will have different 1H NMRs"? I think everyone knows this. My next org lett paper will explore the computational IR spectra of these two structures. I LOVE IR!

Unknown said...

You're retarded. I love papers that publicly bitch slap people. It's like our own organic chemistry soap opera!