According to international scientific protocols, new elements can only be officially recognised after their existence is verified by repeating the experiment successfully.

n Earth; instead, they are synthesised in specialised laboratories with particle accelerators.(2)
Inside these accelerators, ions are smashed together at drastic speeds, colliding with target atoms with the possibility of achieving atomic fusion and creating larger elements. (3)

For chemists and nuclear physicists, the race to discover new elements is very important as such discoveries can have various practical applications in steady nuclear fusion for the generation of energy, a process that also takes place in stars. (4) For example, seaborgium, which has 106 protons, was first produced at the University of California, Berkeley, by directing oxygen (which has 8 protons) at californium (containing 98 protons). (This process is like trying to set up too reluctant friends on a date and hoping for a marriage. 

Despite the hopes for achieving atomic fusion, working with particle accelerators is quite challenging as the hoped collisions, often referred to as "hits," are rare. In most cases, the involved nuclei break apart (just like most marriages) leading to atomic fission and even when a new element is successfully synthesised, it tends to become highly unstable, resulting in a radioactive decay within milliseconds or microseconds due to the electrostatic repulsion between the positively charged protons.(5)

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Ninov had previously introduced his old team to a software program nicknamed "Goosy,"  which was capable of analysing any accelerator's data. This software program actually  played a pivotal role in the discovery of numerous elements, such as darmstadtium (110), roentgenium (111), and copernicium (112). It was with Goosey that Ninov had made his name. So it was with great excitement when this well known and highly respected physicist,

Within just six months of joining the institution's research team, had made claims about the discovery of elements 114, 116, and 118, which seemed too good to be true. (see Chapman, source 1)

According to international scientific protocols, new elements can only be officially recognised after their existence is verified by repeating the experiment successfully.

Hence, when research groups in Japan and the GSI in Germany Attempted to reproduce these results, they had both failed leading to a thorough investigation of Ninov's team's data provision. 

The investigators had concluded that Ninov, being the sole team member capable of translating computer-generated data into experimental results, fabricated data specifically related to the decay chains and the sequence of radioactive decay events related to the newly produced elements (not to overcomplicate things). (6)

The false claims caused a crisis in scientific ethical conduct on a global scale, and therefore Victor Ninov, "The man who tried to fake an element" was fired in 2002, compromising the integrity of the research; though his fellow teammates were to blame as well considering the lack of precision and diligence.  (7)

 

When one hears the word “scientist”, or lawyer, or doctor, they imagine them as great intellectuals beholding great potential that help advance society as a whole.

Ninov though, who had an admirable reputation at the beginning of his career became known as a fraud to the international scientific community, who had  crushed years of expensive education and a high profile all to chase at the short skirt of fleeting glory.