Incorrect Conclusions

Unfortunately, Dalton included an additional postulate that prevented his theory from being accepted for many years. When atoms combine in only one ratio, Dalton said, "..it must be presumed to be a binary one, unless some cause appear to the contrary" [2]. He had no experimental evidence to support this postulate, and it lead him to mistakenly assume that the formula of water was OH and the formula of ammonia was NH. As a result, Dalton's atomic weights for oxygen and nitrogen were incorrect and his experimental data did not support many of the conclusions he drew from it.