Reply to the Letter-to-the-Editor By Susanta Lahiri

Swadesh Mandal

Received: 25 March 2014 / Published online: 20 April 2014

� Akademiai Kiado, Budapest, Hungary 2014

Sir,

1. After the sad demise of Dr. Nayak, who was my

former Ph.D supervisor, I was forced to complete my

research work under the official guidance of Prof.

Lahiri because of signing my thesis and he was only

option as a radiochemist at SINP. My thesis work was

planned under the guidance of late Dr. Nayak.

However out of my seven papers (thesis related)

Prof. Lahiri was the co-author of five papers which

were also chalked out by late Dr. Nayak. The

questioned work carried out long ago was submitted

after correction (by Prof. Lahiri) which directly

reflects in the acknowledgement. It should be noted

that the said work was not considered as my Ph.D

work and therefore not included in my thesis even it

was not planned and experimented by Prof. Lahiri.

Therefore, after completion of my Ph.D then Prof.

Lahiri told me to communicate the manuscript, and,

as per his consent, his name was included only in the

acknowledgement. Even if there is no such legal

document present in SINP that one researcher can’t

publish his/her own research to any reputed journal, in

that case there is no necessity to take any consent

from any custodian of any instrument. Our institute

rather encourages and supports young researchers to

perform independent research. One may easily find

the publication page of SINP.

2. I too was in a view that TOA & TIOA should not

exhibit any difference in reaction mechanism, but I

have found in my experiment that separation was

achieved at 2 M concentration of TIOA with TDW

instead of 0.5 M TOA with 10-5M HCl [1]. So, it is

evident that the above two processes of separations

can never be defined as same process in Chemical

Science experiments. Because, TIOA & TOA are two

different isomers and separation conditions are dis-

tinctly different in view of using TDW and 10-5 M

HCl.

3. So far, when using HCl (up to 10-5 M) we were

getting a gradually increasing separation factor and

extending the experiment using TDW alone confirm-

ing theoretical pH of 7, we got the maximum

separation factor beyond the previous one and up to

107. So, using HCl as aqueous phase is no longer

valid for this paper. Therefore, we claimed the

method as sensitive and inexpensive while using

TDW alone as aqueous phase.

4. It is a common experience that pH level of TDW

varies in laboratory environment. We have used

freshly prepared triple distilled water for the exper-

iment and the pH was measured several times at

experimentation. We found the pH level of TDW not

less than 6.5 repeatedly at our laboratory environ-

ment. Therefore, whatever is the common experience,

we found the measured value as stated above quite

scientifically in our laboratory condition. Therefore,

considering pH level 5, 6 and 6.5 all equal in

chemical science has no scientific meaning as because

we achieved distinctively different result (separation

factor of the order 107) using TDW.

5. Surely, neither TIOA nor TOA comes under green

reagents by virtue in terms of any referred paper.

This rebuttal letter refers to the article available at doi:10.1007/

s10967-014-3135-9.

S. Mandal (&)

Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, India

e-mail: swadeshchem@rediffmail.com

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J Radioanal Nucl Chem (2014) 301:303–304

DOI 10.1007/s10967-014-3136-8

Moreover, use of either TIOA or TOA is much less

expensive than using any green reagents i.e. ionic

liquids along with highly expensive supra pure HCl.

Even I have never claimed my experimentation as

green chemistry anyway.

6. I never claimed separation factor greater than 107 at

all. What I claimed that one can reach separation

factor up to *107 as a different mode of separation

using 2 M TIOA along with TDW.

7. It should be very clear at first that both the authors

Mandal and Mandal of this article are the same

persons as it was in Mandal, Mandal and Lahiri in

Ref. [2]. Not only that both the experiments were

carried out with the same laboratory setup and mostly

with similar activity but with different design only.

So, experimental sections were written in similar way

in both the articles. Quite naturally it seems to be

copied but in fact it is not so.

8. I have carried out both experiments in question nearly

two years ago and contemporarily with the similar

experiment referred in the previous article. But this

paper was submitted after 2 years of the experimen-

tation. So, no question of change in specific activity of99Mo arises in view of time.

9. Experiment of the said paper also carried out

contemporarily with the same specific activity. Even

all the data and also the manuscript was rigorously

checked by Prof. Lahiri himself before giving his

consent to submit the manuscripts with myself as the

corresponding author. Prof. Lahiri agreed that his name

is mentioned in the acknowledgement. In my view,

authors are those who were scientifically involved in

that article and surely we did accordingly [3].

10. Prof. Lahiri had a disagreement with us on the

specific activity of 99Mo and others such as TDW

versus 10-5 M HCl etc. But we had already replied to

those comments. It proves our way of thinking in

disagreement with Prof. Lahiri was correct, because

the paper was accepted without any revision. There-

fore, mere disagreement with anyone does not imply

disqualification of the results of any scientific exper-

iment. Even after manuscript correction and disagree-

ment too Prof. Lahiri was very much sure that we

were going to submit the article to JRNC.

References

1. Maiti M, Lahiri S (2010) Separation of 99Mo and 99mTc by liquid–

liquid extraction using trioctylamine as extractant. J Radioanal

Nucl Chem 283:661–663

2. Mandal S, Mandal A, Lahiri S (2013) Species dependent extraction

of 99Mo. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 295:861–863

3. Mandal S, Mandal A (2014) Separation of no-carrier-added99mTcO4

- from 99Mo-99mTc equilibrium mixture by PEG based

aqueous biphasic separation technique using sodium/potassium

salts of citric and tartaric acid. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 299:

1225–1230

304 J Radioanal Nucl Chem (2014) 301:303–304

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