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- Posts: 1861
- Joined: Fri Aug 08, 2008 11:54 am
But does anyone else find it frustrating that methods sections in publications often appear to be written by someone who either had no idea what the method was, or no inclination to share it?
I've just been asked, quite reasonably, to reproduce an HPLC analysis where the original method tells me how the sample was made (good) what instrument was used (not especially helpful), that the column was a core-shell from Phenomenex, with its physical dimensions. It neglects to tell me the column chemistry, the solvents, or the gradient (i.e. everything that actually mattered). It ends by saying "Internal standards for <the names of all the analytes, none being an internal standard> were used to generate standard curves for quantification of the respective compounds." which leaves me thoroughly puzzled: did they use internal standard calibration or external?
There's a reviewing issue too: it's quite difficult for 2 or 3 reviewers to have expertise in every part of a multi-disciplinary paper, and it's quite likely 1 or 2 of the reviewers are sufficiently senior that they no longer have any contact with lab-work. Being unpaid and busy, the reviewers probably won't try too hard anyway, and if the methods are buried in some supplementary stuff in a different place to the main paper, it's quite likely some reviewers won't even read it. Clearly no one who knew anything about HPLC read this method.
This sort of situation seems to happen so depressingly regularly.