Murphy's Law and common mistakes in applied spectroscopy

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Johannes Kiefer
• Subject Area: Technical Thermodynamics
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 431790391

The increasing availability of commercial spectroscopy instruments resulted in a strngly increasing number of users over the last 10-15 years. This is true in academia as well as in the industry. The user friendliness of modern devices however gives the impression that the methods are simple. As a consequence, the right level of expertise has not been built up in some labs. This explains the increasing number of papers in the literature that contain significant errors either regarding the spectroscopy itself or the data interpretation. This sets the starting point of the current project. It aims at identifying, analyzing, and quantifying common mistakes and their impact. The focus is on three areas: 1) mistakes occuring from the wrong use of equipment, 2) mistakes occuring from the data processing, and 3) mistakes occuring from the data evaluation. In addition to the scientific analysis, there wil be frequent workshops in order to enhance the scientific exchange and disseminate the findings rapidly.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants