Hi I was thinking about the last statement in the Acta editorial - "It is important to note, however, that in neither of these cases was a single frame of data collected. Not one.". This brought me back to the images..
To date there is no "global" acceptance that original diffractiom images must be deposited (though I personally think there should be). Many of the arguments around this issue relate to the time and space required to house such data. However (and apologies if this has already been raised and I have missed it), if our sole intent is to ascertain that there's no trouble at t'mill then deposition of a modest wedge of data and / or a 0 and 90, while not ideal, may be sufficient to provide a decent additional check and balance, particularly if such images, headers etc were automatically analysed as part of the already excellent validation tools in development. I'm sure there are a number of clever ways (that could be unadvertised or kept confidential to the pdb) that could be used to check off sufficient variables within such data such that it should (?) be very difficult to falsify images without triggering alarm bells. Of course this would probably then drive those that are truly bonkers to attempt to fabricate realistically noisy false diffraction images, however I would hope that such a scheme might make things just a little more difficult for those with fraudulent intent, particularly if no one (apart from the developers) knows precisely how and what the checking software checks! While it seems sad that it's come to this cell biologists and biochemists have had to deal with more and more sophisticated versions of the "photoshopped western" for years. Accordingly, most high profile journals run figures through commercial software that does a reasonable job of detection of such issues. J Sent from my iPhone On 03/04/2012, at 11:10 PM, Dyda <[email protected]> wrote: > I think that to review a paper containing a structure derived from > crystallographic data should indeed involve the referee having access > to coordinates and to the electron density. Without this access it > is not possible to judge the quality and very often even the > soundness of statements in the paper. > > I think the argument that this may give a competitive advantage > to the referee who him or herself maybe working on the same thing > should be mute, as I thought article refereeing was supposed to > be a confidential process. Breaching this would be a serious > ethical violation. In my experience, before agreeing to review, > we see the abstract, I was always thought that I was supposed to > decline if there is a potential conflict with my own work. > Perhaps naively, but I always assumed that everyone acts like this. > > Unfortunately however, there is another serious issue. > > After a very troubling experience with a paper I reviewed, I discussed > this issue with journal editors. What they said was that they already > have a hell of time to find people who agree to referee, by raising the > task level (asking refs to look at coords and density) they feared > that no one would agree. Actually, perhaps many have noticed the > large number of 5 liner referee reports saying really not much about a > full length research article. People simply don't have the time to > put the effort in. So I am not sure how realistic is to ask even more, > for something that at some level, is pro bono work. > > > Fred > [32m******************************************************************************* > Fred Dyda, Ph.D. Phone:301-402-4496 > Laboratory of Molecular Biology Fax: 301-496-0201 > DHHS/NIH/NIDDK e-mail:[email protected] > Bldg. 5. Room 303 > Bethesda, MD 20892-0560 URGENT message e-mail: [email protected] > Google maps coords: 39.000597, -77.102102 > http://www2.niddk.nih.gov/NIDDKLabs/IntramuralFaculty/DydaFred > *******************************************************************************[m
