On the subject of withdrawal of entries from the PDB, I just flag up another interesting aspect.
Four years ago I was Visiting Fellow in a colleague's lab, and in the course of the year I determined, refined and deposited 4 good structures, authored by me and my colleagues who were part of the research. Due to a scientific disagreement on the manuscript describing the structures, my colleague wrote to the PDB and unilaterally withdrew the 4 entries, without letting me know in advance nor consulting me and against my will. When I wrote to the PDB to complain (i was the depositor) they answered: "Thank you for your email. According to the wwPDB policy, if there is a case of conflict between authors, the PI of the project makes the final decision. Since Dr. <name omitted> is the PI for this project, we have to take his word as final. Please see below the extract of the policy (http://www.wwpdb.org/policy.html). Please note, PDB cannot resolve any conflict between authors. This has to be resolved by the authors." My colleague has since re-determined, re-refined and re-deposited the structures against the data taken from the crystals I grew (with his name as the only author of all 4 entries0 and they have published the work without granting me co-authorship on the paper. I wrote immediately to the journal and they suggested that the Institute where I carried out the research carry out an internal investigation. Which is ongoing. It's all very well that all is done in good faith but sometimes on-trust policy + absence of a "court" to appeal to in case of misconduct are a rather insufficient combination when it comes to PDB depositions/withdrawals. with best wishes, Pietro best regards, Sanchayita Sen PDBe Depositions Sent from my Desktop Dr. Pietro Roversi Oxford University Biochemistry Department - Glycobiology Division South Parks Road Oxford OX1 3QU England - UK Tel. 0044 1865 275339 ________________________________ From: CCP4 bulletin board [CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK] on behalf of Trevor Sewell [trevor.sew...@uct.ac.za] Sent: 27 June 2017 07:34 To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Subject: [ccp4bb] Incorrect Structure in the PDB I have come across a key paper in my field that describes an enzyme mechanism. Their work is based on a deposited structure – by other authors - that is incorrectly interpreted. Is there a process for removing a demonstrably wrong structure (deposited by others) from the PDB and replacing it with a correctly interpreted structure based on the original data? Or is there an alternative, and generally recognized, way of getting the correct structure in the public domain? Many thanks for your advice on this matter. Trevor Sewell Disclaimer - University of Cape Town This e-mail is subject to UCT policies and e-mail disclaimer published on our website at http://www.uct.ac.za/about/policies/emaildisclaimer/ or obtainable from +27 21 650 9111. If this e-mail is not related to the business of UCT, it is sent by the sender in an individual capacity. Please report security incidents or abuse via cs...@uct.ac.za
