The Boron Moron confesses

The "boron moron," Kenneth Change, confesses. Conan O'Brien of all people picked it up. He did a first-class job with large color graphics.

TierneyLab Blog - NYTimes.com:

So far in 2009, 100 percent of the corrections generated by my articles have showed up on late-night television. (Okay, I’m one-for-one, but I can aim for Letterman or Colbert next.)

In last week’s Science Times, I wrote about a new superhard form of boron. The researcher, Artem Oganov of Stony Brook University, told me that boron, #5 on the periodic table, is a confounding sort of element where even the slightest impurities can change its structure. Of the 16 different forms that have been reported, only three were likely to be true crystal structures of pure boron, he said.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t counting his own discovery, the superhard boron, and I goofed it up.