Overlapping Patterson peaks and direct methods: the structure of prostratin

A genralized discussion of direct methods of solving the phase problem leads to the suggestion that overlapping vectors in the Patterson function may be the cause of failures in these methods. A simple removal of these overlapping vectors is proposed, which produces modified |E| values. There were used with the program MULTAN to solve the structure of a prostratin derivative, C22H28O6, which had otherwise resisted solution.