Abstract
This chapter lists a number of common misconceptions encountered in chemical kinetics, which are called fallacies in this text. These fallacies are often found even in otherwise high-quality publications and can typically be avoided only through maintaining constant awareness about their possible occurrence. Examples are given to explain these misconceptions and their possible origins are also discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
To quote the late US senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
- 2.
It is a long-standing observation of the present author that IUPAC recommendations are much more often cited than read. It is a pity because their wisdom typically exceeds the expectations of chemists by far.
- 3.
This argument is most often used by kineticists who have access to instruments operating under very high and variable pressures. In mechanistic research, they favor activation volumes for the diagnostic purpose that activation entropies are also used for.
- 4.
This is a typical example where scientists would benefit from following an ethical guideline of the Dalai Lama: observed phenomena should not be dismissed just because of the absence of explanatory mechanisms [20].
- 5.
Just to make sure: the commonly used software Microsoft Excel is suitable for a lot of tasks, but not for routinely fitting nonlinear curves.
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Lente, G. (2015). Common Pitfalls. In: Deterministic Kinetics in Chemistry and Systems Biology. SpringerBriefs in Molecular Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15482-4_5
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