Today, we are talking about the most beautiful footnote I have ever read. Or at least the best footnote I have ever read in a scientific paper, as the rest of us cannot hope to aspire to the footnote talents of Sir Terry Pratchett.
Whether they will admit it or not, every scientist has at some point received comments during the peer review process that they incorporated into their manuscript only because the only argument against it they could come up with was effectively “But I don’t wanna!”. These comments usually come from Reviewer #3. Very few of us have the nerve to do what Story and Saunders did in their 1962 paper “Structure of the 7-Norbornadienyl Cation” (Story, P. R.; Saunders, M. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1962, 84, 4876).
There’s no real reason for me not to do this but I’m only doing it to make the reviewers happy
The structure of norbonadienyl cations was the subject of a truly ridiculous controversy that could be the subject of an extensive Science Shenanigans post (and will be, stay tuned!). The important thing to know about this particular paper is that the discussion section focuses exclusively on a bridged structure that was not described in classical bonding models, but was well documented as a possibility in related compounds. Before the extensive discussion though, there’s a footnote:
“The information here will not, of course, differentiate between a non-classical ion and a mixture of rapidly equilibrating classical structures. However, since the only evidence presented thus far (ref 3a, 7) favors the non-classical structure, we shall argue in terms of this concept. This footnote was prompted by the statements of one of the referees.”
Given the heated controversy over the non-classical structure, everyone reading the paper probably would have guessed that they only put that footnote in because a reviewer insisted. For that matter, they probably would have had a pretty good idea of who that reviewer was (anonymity only goes so far when someone is widely known to be the only person holding a position). But Story and Saunders apparently wanted to make absolutely sure that everyone knew that they were only acknowledging the other possibility under duress.