Do we really want clickbait headlines in the science community?

In 2024, a research group led by UCLA chemist Neil Garg overturned Bredt’s rule, a principle that had stood for more than a century. The rule states that molecules cannot form a carbon-carbon double bond at the “bridgehead” position (the ring junction of a bridged bicyclic molecule). Building on that breakthrough, Garg’s team has now developed methods to create even stranger structures: cage-shaped molecules known as cubene and quadricyclene that contain highly unusual double bonds.

Are they allowed to just overturn the rules of chemistry like that? Won’t that make the universe get wonky?!

I wouldn’t call it so disruptive. I mean, sure this is a great discovery in the field of organic chemistry and will allow producing new molecules. But it’s not like this gets us into a paradigm shift or anything like that, this still builds within the framework of Quantum Mechanics and is not something that was previously believed theoretically impossible. It is something quite amazing that they pulled it off and it will open up new possibilities in the drug discovery field.

I’ll be waiting for molecules with such moieties to show up in commercial provider catalogues in the following years.