Hello,
I also agree that the right order of things would be the journals
taking action (i.e. retracting and commenting on why), then informing
the pdb which structures are associated with a retraction - for the
simple reason that very likely many readers take conclusions in
made-up publications for granted even if they do not directly work
with the fraudent models that are deposited, i.e. the publications do
even more harm to the research community than the associated fraud
structures.
Because the case of Murthy came up I would like to mention that the US
Office of Research Integrity (http://ori.hhs.gov/) is still reviewing
the case (at least they told me so in Nov 2013), and I hope their
final conclusion will result in more comprehensive action against ALL
structures in question, not just 2hr0 (by the University of Birmingham
and the journals). So while it may be frustratingly slow, there is
actually an institution that does take care of such issues (at least
in the US).
Bärbel
Quoting Mark Wilson <[email protected]>:
Hi Nat,
I agree that journals should be doing the heavy lifting here, for the
reasons that you note. I also want to be clear that I believe the PDB is a
crowning achievement of transparency and open access in the sciences,
which is one reason that I am so concerned about this issue. I am in no
way trying to impugn the hard and superb work that they have done over
many decades. I still contend, however, that having models whose
integrity is highly suspect lurking in the PDB with no indications of
problems beyond a dodgy validation report is a non-optimal outcome. As
for the meaning of integrity, I'm using this word in place of others that
might be considered more legally actionable. A franker conversation would
likely more clearly draw the line that we're wrestling with here.
Best regards,
Mark
Mark A. Wilson
Associate Professor
Department of Biochemistry/Redox Biology Center
University of Nebraska
N118 Beadle Center
1901 Vine Street
Lincoln, NE 68588
(402) 472-3626
[email protected]
On 5/14/14 12:41 PM, "Nat Echols" <[email protected]> wrote:
On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 10:26 AM, Mark Wilson <[email protected]> wrote:
Getting to Eric's point about an impasse, if the PDB will not claim the
authority to safeguard the integrity of their holdings (as per their
quoted statement in Bernhard's message below), then who can?
I think this may in part boil down to a semantic dispute over the meaning
of "integrity". I interpreted it to mean "integrity (and public
availability) of the data as deposited by the authors", which by itself
is quite a lot of work. Safeguarding
the integrity of the peer-review process is supposed to be the job of
the journals, some of which - unlike the PDB - are making a tidy profit
from our efforts. Since they justify this profit based on the value they
supposedly add as gatekeepers, I don't think
it's unreasonable for us to expect them to do their job, rather than
leave it to the PDB annotators, who surely have enough to deal with.
I do share some of the concern about 2hr0, but I am curious where the
line should be drawn. This is an extraordinary case where the
researcher's institution requested retraction, but I think everyone who's
been in this field for a while has
a list of dodgy structures that they think should be retracted - not
always with justification.
-Nat
--
Bärbel Blaum, Ph.D.
Interfakultäres Institut für Biochemie (IFIB)
Hoppe-Seyler-Strasse 4
D-72076 Tübingen
Germany
+49 70 71 29 73 375
