TORONTO -- A Nobel Prize winner has admitted she 鈥渄id not do her job well鈥� after a scientific paper published last year was retracted.
American Frances Arnold won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2018
on January 2, she revealed a different paper, published May 2019, has been pulled from the highly-respected 鈥淪cience鈥� magazine.
鈥淔or my first work-related tweet of 2020, I am totally bummed to announce that we have retracted last year's paper on enzymatic synthesis of beta-lactams,鈥�
鈥淭he work has not been reproducible. It is painful to admit, but important to do so. I apologize to all.
鈥淚 was a bit busy when this was submitted, and did not do my job well.鈥�
The paper, titled 鈥淪ite-selective enzymatic C鈥扝 amidation for synthesis of diverse lactams,鈥� was published with co-authors Zhi-Jun Jia and Inha Cho.
said efforts to try and reproduce the work of Arnold, Jia and Cho had failed, essentially proving it wrong.
鈥淓fforts to reproduce the work showed that the enzymes do not catalyze the reactions with the activities and selectivities claimed,鈥� the note read.
鈥淐areful examination of the first author's lab notebook then revealed missing contemporaneous entries and raw data for key experiments. The authors are therefore retracting the paper.鈥�
But other scientists were quick to commend Arnold, who works at the California Institute of Technology and sits on the , for admitting her mistake.
鈥淪ometimes things appear to work, then they don鈥檛. Science should be a process, not winner takes all whatever the cost,鈥� from the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
鈥淓ntrepreneurs are encouraged to fail well, but in science it鈥檚 still taboo. I hope when I slip up I鈥檓 able to do it so openly and well.鈥�
Indian scientist Anmol Kilkarni also praised Arnold for her honesty.
鈥淪eeing a Nobel laureate tweet about a paper retraction teaches how important it is for scientist to be honest about their data,鈥�
鈥淔or someone like me who is just starting out in the field of research, your act teaches an important lesson.鈥�
