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 So, using HCl as aqueous phase is no longer
valid for this paper.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: [email protected]
123
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
123
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