Talk:Thallium

Heh, I wrote my toxicology dissertation on Thallium at uni. I'll have to see if I can dig it out. One thing I do remember is that a nurse who was treating a patient discovered that they had the same symptoms as a character in a book who was suffering from Thallium toxicity, and so they were correctly diagnosed. Also, it was initially assumed that Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with Thallium before they discovered it was actually Polonium. Crundy^{Talk nerdy to me} 15:08, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes it's been used in a few fictional poisonings too? ("Young Poisoner's Handbook" and an Agatha Christie, I think...) Polonium is rarely encountered outside radiological labs, so it's not surprising it took them a while to twig it was what was poisoning Litvineko.--Feline1 (talk) 15:15, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Delete

I'm not really sure why we are attempting to recreate chemistry books here, but this seems like our math articles - something better done by a simple reference to Wikipedia, rather than using our space. At least for most, the one on arsenic is important with all the NASA stuff about "new life". --Godot 16:16, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I thought it would be obvious by reading what I'd written, but obviously it wasn't to you, so allow me to explain my reasoning: I agree that reproducing the kind of factual material found in textbooks and wikipedia is not the role of Rational Wiki. That's why I said as much and put a link to the relevent wikipedia article in the first sentence. The remainder of the article is about Bad Science and quacky uses for technology. Which I believe is of interest to our readers. It is also similar to the scope of the radium article, hence my "see also" link to there.--Feline1 (talk) 17:30, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Rationalwiki is not an encyclopedia. this article is nothing to do with RW's mission. Sophie^Wilder 22:01, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Identifying the organic chemist

Snark and science, I trust. No-one I knew ever had the slightest desire to use his organothallium wonder-reagents (in Grignard Reactions, perhaps?), no matter how good the yield.

Has anyone got access to Chem. Abs.? From memory, he was active in England (possibly the University of East Anglia) in the early 1970s and published in places like J.Chem.Soc. and J.Org.Chem. ProblemChimp (talk) 15:59, 5 November 2014 (UTC)