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Comment by pseudochemist | Hacker News Reader

> I'm inclined to give them a pass. It's easy enough to figure out that it should be germanium and not gadolinium, and dyslexia already exists among scientists.

I’m not. If somewhat said Pi was 9.14 I think no one would give it a pass. It’s not like a misspelling. It’s an invalid element which is the chemistry equivalent of an absurdly wrong number in maths.

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It's more like saying pi is approximately "3..14". Easily corrected syntax errors aren't as bad as semantic errors.

No. The 9.14 vs. 3.14 analogy is more suitable.

If you have read the blog post it's a difference between the chemical symbol Ge and Gr, which as I understand is what you would refer to as a "semantic error".

But Gr isn't an element so no one would ever misidentify it as part of compound, its obviously a mistake. Like if I said pi was 3.`4

How would the reader know the writer intended Ge instead of Ga? More importantly: why should the burden of figuring that out fall on the reader instead of the writer? Especially when considering that every publication normally has a lot more readers than writers.

In this case, chemistry of Ga and Ge are a bit different, and the Cr compound that was misstated is part of a family of materials that rely heavily on the coordinating chemistry of Ge and its mates in the same period. So it makes more sense. If indeed it were Ga, that would be an interesting compound that probably wouldn't look anything like the material families being discussed by these authors.

I think the reader and the writer share the burden of accurate communication. The reader should ideally come prepared and the writer should provide as best they can. A prepared reader makes quick work of this typo.

Thanks for replying, I understand your original reasoning now in a way that I didn't when I last responded. I was only considering how it would appears to people who don't recognize Gr isn't an element, I agree that it's a syntactic mistake to those who know chemical symbols well.

It should be "someone", not "somewhat".

"Pi" is only capitalized at the start of a sentence.

"no one would give it a pass" is a logically unsound claim, given the number of people on the planet.

How very absurdly wrong of you :)

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