What is and what should never be: artifacts, improbable phytochemicals, contaminants and natural products

The scope of this review is to sensitize the natural product chemists to the underestimated problem related to artifact, comprising contaminants and improbable natural compounds. This review wants to give an overview about the various facets of this problem and to provide some hints to avoid incurring these situations. It does not pretend to report exhaustively about all the cases available in literature. The issue of artifacts has always existed and is quite impossible to completely eliminate because the results of phytochemical analysis are known only at the end of the work and in many cases there is not the possibility to compare the results. Therefore, it is important to take the necessary precautions during the workout in order to minimize the possibility that an unexpected event may occur. In second instance, anyone involved in these studies should increase the level of self-criticism with respect to the obtained experimental results.