The above analysis shows that the experimental data can be well fitted by a simple, first order kinetic model, with reasonable consistency between experiments. Now, the goal of this study, beyond the mere determination of eigenmodes, is to actually extract the values of the kinetic model parameters that describe the full reaction pathway under study. This task is rendered difficult because the complexity of the reaction network entails eigenmodes that are involved algebraic functions of the kinetic and relaxation parameters (see Eq. 3). Therefore, the relation between the extracted eigenmodes that characterize the kinetics during an experiment and the model parameters are not one to one, and fitting may often lead to values that do not make physical sense. The presence of such meaningless parameter values was particularly marked for the anomer exchange rates k α and k β , which converged to values that did not agree with the expected ratio k α /k β obtained from the measured intensities of the β and α 13 C 1 resonance lines at thermal equilibrium. Moreover, Monte Carlo simulations often showed broad distributions of the parameter values, as .