[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [ccp4bb]: Comments on ligands

***  For details on how to be removed from this list visit the  ***
***          CCP4 home page http://www.ccp4.ac.uk         ***


professor james wrote:

> happened. One way to do this is to ensure we all deposit data as well as
> model. 
> 
> (A sure way to discourage this is for people to make careers out of
> highlighting trivial errors or honest mistakes.)	

i don't know (nor care) if this is aimed at me, but would like to point out
that this is a rather puerile point of view. it's like refusing to wear a seat
belt, just because there are people (namely policemen) who make a career out
of fining people who honest-to-goodness forgot to put on their belts and got
caught. most children go through such a phase, but get out of it before they
decide to become crystallographers ("trotsaldern", with a good swedish word).

you should deposit model and data because it is the scientifically (and
ethically) correct thing to do (unless you do have something to hide), and not
just because the journal, iucr, nih, or i say so. one of the things that
differentiate science from pseudo-science, fiction, religion, etc. is the fact
that it is (or rather, should be) self-correcting. however, without access to
the experimental data this is almost impossible to achieve in the case of
crystallography.

a model deposited without data (or not at all) one has to take on faith (i.e.,
more religion than science). for a model deposited with data, you can go and
check the electron density yourself (e.g., using the uppsala electron density
server, EDS, a pre-release version of which is available at
http://fsrv1.bmc.uu.se/eds).

--gerard

******************************************************************
                        Gerard J.  Kleywegt
    [Research Fellow of the Royal  Swedish Academy of Sciences]
Dept. of Cell & Molecular Biology  University of Uppsala
                Biomedical Centre  Box 596
                SE-751 24 Uppsala  SWEDEN

    http://xray.bmc.uu.se/gerard/  mailto:gerard@xray.bmc.uu.se
******************************************************************
   The opinions in this message are fictional.  Any similarity
   to actual opinions, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
******************************************************************