Chemists carry out a structural do over

Abstract

In what is being called an honest mistake, a research group has reported that the structure of the headline compound from a paper it published in 2002 is incorrect. To set the record straight, the team has retracted the paper and at the same time published a new paper reporting the actual structure. The original paper published by Chris Orvig and his group at the University of British Columbia reported the synthesis of a new tetraazamacrocycle ligand (Inorg. Chem. 2002, DOI: 10.1021/ic010716a). The researchers made the compound to see how replacing two methylene groups in a macrocyclic ring with phosphinate groups affected the stability of complexes formed with lanthanide ions. Such complexes are of interest as contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging. Orvig says all the characterization data were consistent with the ligand having a dimeric structure. But the team had a hard time growing crystals of the ligand and