There have been numerous attempts to give scientific respectability to products that have foundered on uncontrolled studies. These attempts could only be called illusions or magic tricks, but generally they are addressed to a non-expert audience.
Isaac Asimov was only joking because he was actively and humorously trying to promote Thiotimoline. Thiotimoline simply does not exist, but Asimov introduced his imaginary chemical substance in an absolutely scientific way , with references to specific ( even if fictitious) studies, and with a very clear intention of making fun of (some) scientific researches. Asimov’s speech was absolutely cryptic, and only an expert chemist would have seen that he was talking about a chemical substance that didn’t exist. Summarizing Asimov’s data, he presented the new chemical substance called Thiotimoline more or less in this way:
There is a substantial relationship between the structure of organic molecules and their physical and chemical properties. This has enabled us to better understand the mechanisms of organic reactions, particularly in the resonance theory. In this regard, the solubility of organic compounds gave particular importance to Thiotimoline, a substance discovered in recent years.
The solubility of organic compounds in polar solvents like water is increased by the presence in the hydrocarbon core of hydrophilic groups, like the OH- hydrosil, [-NH2] amine or sulfonic acid [-SO3H]. If the physical characteristics of the two compounds are equal, the solution time, expressed in seconds per grams of solvent per inch material, decreases with the number of hydrophilic groups. For example, pyrocatechol, with two hydroxyl groups on the benzene nucleus, melts considerably faster than phenol, which has only one hydroxyl group in the nucleus.
Feinschreiber & Hravlek pointed out that the solution tends to zero with increasing the hydrophilicity. However, according to the two scholars, this analysis is not correct after the discovery of Thiotimoline, whose compound dissolves in water, in the proportions 1 GM-ml, in less than 12 seconds, 1. That is to say that Thiotimoline melts before the water is added.
Other studies confirm that Thiotimoline has at least 14 hydroxyl groups, two amino groups and a sulfonic group. The presence of another nitric acid [NO2-] group has not yet been confirmed, as there is no evidence on the nature of the hydrocarbon group, although it seems certain a partially aromatic structure (1).
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Notes
1) In 1948 Isaac Asimov published his article on Thiotimeline on Astounding Science Fiction Magazine ( See S. Santini, in Explorations in Image Databases, University of California, San Diego, 1998, p. XII).
Asimov’s references
E.J. Feinschreiber and Y. Hravlek, “Chemical Solubility and Speed”, in Journal of the Chemical Solubility, 1939, 22, pp. 57-68.
