Professors Cause Many Problems  

Open letter to “Editor in Chief” of “Science” and “Nature” Journals

After 40+ years dedicated to the field of surface chemical analysis in various industrial labs and contract labs in the USA, I would like to raise the alarm bell about the unreliable database of XPS binding energies (BEs) that are available 24/7 to all young professors and older farts who use those BEs to make all sorts of bad error-filled chemical state assignments.

A few years ago a groups published about the problems of Reproducibility of Science results, but they were not willing to point the proverbial finger at the cause of the problem.

The root cause is the ineptness and laziness of older professors in academia which is destroying the usefulness of new science being produced by younger eager professors. The older professors have been using the NIST database ever since it came online. in June 2000. Prior to that all of the exact same unreliable BEs were published as Appendices in Wiley book and the PHI Handbook of XPS, the de factor bible for XPS.

I have published in reviews in JESC and in JSA in Japan about the problems in these sources. Even so, the number of papers publishing bad erroneous XPS BEs grows exponentially due to the internet and faster speed of XPS instruments. The biggest problem is with insulators which constitute >80% of all materials analyzed by XPS.

I love the field of XPS and am still amazed at its fantastic utility.

I want to write a sort paper or letter that clearly blames all of academia that use XPS. They not only use NIST BEs, but also compound problems by not publishing useful calibration info, nor data collection info etc.

If I spend some time to write such a letter or short article, then would Nature actually publish a paper that is extremely critical of those academics who use the NIST database and who fail to publish sufficient data processing details?

I am also sending this letter to Science’s Editor in Chief hoping to help the future of materials and process development in industry and academia sooner than later.