Steganone is an unusual natural product, known for about 40 years now. The assignment of its absolute configurations makes for an interesting, on occasion rather confusing, and perhaps not entirely atypical story. I will start with the modern accepted stereochemical structure of this molecule, which comes in the form of two separately isolable atropisomers.
The first reported synthesis of this system in 1977 was racemic, and no stereochemistry is shown in the article (structure 2).[cite]10.1039/P19770001674[/cite] Three years later an “Asymmetric total synthesis of (-)steganone and revision of its absolute configuration” shows how the then accepted configuration (structure 1 in this article) needs to be revised to the enantiomer shown as structure 12 in the article[cite]10.1016/S0040-4039(00)78586-8[/cite] and matching the above representation. The system has continued to attract interest ever since[cite]10.1039/P19820000521[/cite],[cite]10.1039/A900743A[/cite],[cite]10.1039/C39950001943[/cite],[cite]10.1002/ejoc.201402761[/cite], not least because of the presence of axial chirality in the form of atropisomerism. Thus early on it was shown that the alternative atropisomer, the (aS,R,R) configuration initially emerges out of several syntheses, and has to be converted to the (aR,R,R) configuration by heating[cite]10.1039/P19820000521[/cite]. One could easily be fooled by such isomerism!