The Stumbling BLOG

See how the process of live blogging whoops an or-else table-turning chemical reaction into ... submission.

The stir all started when a publication appeared on an important chemistry journal, JACS (Journal of American Chemical Society), in which it suggested sodium hydride (NaH), a rather unlikely contender, as an intriguing OXIDIZING agent, converting an alcohol into a ketone (albeit a rather limited scope as theauthors observed). In layman's term, it sounds as if the 'black has now become white'. Even any people in the field with minimal vigilance can feel this eye-popping sensation, and people withthe least curiosity about things will wonder how that just happened.

Yet the table is turned just as fast as it takes for the reaction to set up - the mastermind behind the chemistry blog, Totally Synthetic, ran a number of test reactions to explore the generality of this special reaction immediately. No less than 5 groups around the world followed suit and engaged in a number of experimental trials to see how sodium hydride did this little trick, presumably after learning this discovery from the JACS website / RSS feeds. A lot of comments were then exchanged at the blog, and they started to discover certain flaws in the results of this publication - sodium hydride seems to have lost its magic! As it turned out, sodium hydride is NOT the magic after all- it is likely the air that somehow found its way into the reaction flasks which aided in the oxidation of the alcohol group and scored the goal. The question is - How does the table turned over again in such a short duration and efficient manner? It is all about blogging.

It seems the side-show of the circus has attracted more attention in this particular case - it is through the live blogging which makes the whole process of 'peer review' so efficient this time. Clearly in the internet age, we are now in a position to sneak-peek'ASAP articles' even before the hard copies (the book itself) come out , thanks to the enormous journal databases on the web. Fancy the favor of being a sexy web chick? Tweet the way to your journal base then- indeed a number of important journals like those on RSC and Angewandte are now on Twitter. What we can learn from this incident is the notion that a novel form of paradigm is evident- the advance of online publications and communications can indeed serve as a 'preliminary' peer review process, and live blogging may act as a nice platform for many constructive discussions and criticisms. We all need to be ready to change, but at this stage a 'cautious optimistic' attitude would be appropriate.

Ironically , if the 'shock factor' of the article title wasn't that high, it may not even attract the siren after all!!

^o^ Ed Law 13/9/2009

Explore the detailed coverage at: RSC CHEMISTRY WORLD Sep Issue P.6