Victor Ninov
Encyclopedia
Victor Ninov is a former researcher in the nuclear chemistry
Nuclear chemistry
Nuclear chemistry is the subfield of chemistry dealing with radioactivity, nuclear processes and nuclear properties.It is the chemistry of radioactive elements such as the actinides, radium and radon together with the chemistry associated with equipment which are designed to perform nuclear...

 group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...

 (LBNL) who was alleged to have fabricated the evidence used to claim the creation of ununoctium
Ununoctium
Ununoctium is the temporary IUPAC name for the transactinide element having the atomic number 118 and temporary element symbol Uuo. It is also known as eka-radon or element 118, and on the periodic table of the elements it is a p-block element and the last one of the 7th period. Ununoctium is...

 and ununhexium
Ununhexium
Ununhexium is the temporary name of a synthetic superheavy element with the temporary symbol Uuh and atomic number 116. There is no proposed name yet although moscovium has been discussed in the media.It is placed as the heaviest member of group 16 although a sufficiently stable isotope is...

.

Ninov was trained at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung
Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung
The GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research GmbH in the Wixhausen suburb of Darmstadt, Germany is a federally and state co-funded heavy ion research center. The current director of GSI is Horst Stöcker who succeeded Walter F...

 (GSI) (in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. His hiring by the LBNL from GSI had been considered a coup: he had been involved in the discovery of elements 110 (now named darmstadtium
Darmstadtium
Darmstadtium is a chemical element with the symbol Ds and atomic number 110. It is placed as the heaviest member of group 10, but no known isotope is sufficiently stable to allow chemical experiments to confirm its placing in that group...

), 111 (now named roentgenium
Roentgenium
Roentgenium is a synthetic radioactive chemical element with the symbol Rg and atomic number 111. It is placed as the heaviest member of the group 11 elements, although a sufficiently stable isotope has not yet been produced in a sufficient amount that would confirm this position as a heavier...

) and 112 (now named copernicium) and was considered one of the leading experts at using the complex types of software needed to detect the decay chain
Decay chain
In nuclear science, the decay chain refers to the radioactive decay of different discrete radioactive decay products as a chained series of transformations...

 of unstable transuranium element
Transuranium element
In chemistry, transuranium elements are the chemical elements with atomic numbers greater than 92...

s.

When the results of allegedly successful ununoctium and ununhexium discovery experiments proved to be unrepeatable by the Berkeley group and other laboratories around the world, an internal investigation was convened. The result of the investigation was that Dr. Ninov's work had been "fraudulent" and an unusually high-profile scandal followed. An internal committee at the lab concluded that Ninov was the only person in the large project to translate the raw computer results into human-readable results and had used this opportunity to inject false data. Re-analysis of the raw data did not indicate the events which Ninov's analysis originally reported. Ninov was fired in 2001 after claiming that the unique design of his apparatus was responsible for the faulty evidence leading to the alleged new elements. Ninov continues to deny vigorously any wrong-doing and maintains his innocence of any intent to commit fraud. He has also alleged that it was part of an international attempt to frame him and that he was scapegoated because his co-authors did not want to admit to their own errors.

Ninov's work at GSI was also called into question. Re-examination of the data from the experiments conducted at GSI during which Ninov's team had discovered elements 111 and 112 found that the original data had been altered, however repeats of the experiments confirmed the discoveries.

Reports on the Ninov affair were released around the same time that the final report on the Schön affair
Jan Hendrik Schön
The Schön scandal concerns German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön who briefly rose to prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs with semiconductors that were later discovered to be fraudulent...

, another major incident of fraud in physics. As a result, the American Physical Society
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society is the world's second largest organization of physicists, behind the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The Society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the world renowned Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, and organizes more than 20...

adopted more stringent ethical guidelines, especially those regulating the conduct of co-authors.

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