From the story, it seems to be a bit more complicated than that, using not only 
a deposited public-domain PDB, but also other data transferred confidentially 
(undeposited pdb and oral and written reports). This does seem unethical to me. 
I have to admit we only have one side of the story though.

Mark J van Raaij
Dpto de Estructura de Macromoleculas
Centro Nacional de Biotecnologia - CSIC
calle Darwin 3
E-28049 Madrid, Spain
tel. (+34) 91 585 4616


> On 21 Aug 2019, at 11:22, Anastassis Perrakis <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> If the structure has been deposited in the PDB and thus is public ally 
> available, B (or F, G, Φ, Ξ, Δ, Α or whoever else) has every right to use it 
> in a publication. 
> 
> “A” should follow the advice of Frank and do a happy dance for the usefulness 
> of the work, or if not feeling like dancing she/he could follow my advice 
> that will be offered in Greek: «ξυδάκι». 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On 21 Aug 2019, at 11:13, Flemming Goery <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> 
>> Dear all:
>> A has sought a job in the lab of B. B invited A for a interview with a PPT 
>> oral presentation, as requested B has sent the PPT on the structural biology 
>> research of XXX to B by e-mail, and presented in front of A and his 
>> postdoctoral researcher.
>> 
>> After interview, B requested all research documents (including detailed 
>> reports) on XXX to be sent by A to B by e-mail, A sent, including 2 sets of 
>> pdb for the same structure, one set with solvent, one without. A told B all 
>> intellectual property of the Documents and the research belonged to A, based 
>> on the regulation of A's institute.
>> 
>> B sought a referee from A's institute, to someone A did not agree. It seems 
>> the referee told B one set of PDB has been deposited (the one without 
>> solvent)
>> 
>> Then B did not give the offer to A. A joined Institute D, without 
>> independent funding for the writing (in fact, no salary to support this 
>> writing, and no fee for publication of this work).
>> 
>> Several years later, A found B's paper, i.e., the concerned paper published 
>> in Journal C. In the paper, B has used the information from deposited PDB 
>> for 9 times (already a significant paprt of the paper, not to say the 
>> message from the other Documents sent to B by A). In the paper, it write 
>> something like, 'based on our work on the structure of  (folowed by 4 letter 
>> pdb code)', which implied the structure was solved by the authors of the 
>> paper, rather than by A.
>> 
>> A contacted Journal C, Journal C contacted B, B claimed the deposited PDB 
>> was a public domain knowldge. Journal C took the action to add the reference 
>> to the deposited pdb in the paper.
>> 
>> As mentioned, the paper has mentioned and used the message from the 
>> deposited pdb 9 times, and in the paper the reference mark was not added to 
>> the first occurence of the mentioning of the deposited pdb, but added (only 
>> once for the 9 occurences of depositation code) to a paragraph where it can 
>> be concluded that the authors have used the undeposited pdb with the 
>> solvent. In another words, although reference to the deposited pdb was added 
>> by a correction, from where the reference mark was added, it cannot show 
>> they have refered to the cited pdb, not to say the undeposited pdb with 
>> solvent which they used based on the paragraph information.
>> 
>> A's concern was that: A cannot exclude the possibility that the research in 
>> the paper other the part related to PDB, were fabricated, thus A request 
>> paper retraction as the major clain.
>> 
>> If cannot retratcted, A request to be the correspondence author (sometimes 
>> requets co-first author, sometimes request both co-first author and 
>> co-correspondence author), as without A's work (the PPT presentation, 2 sets 
>> of pdb, all documents), the work in the concerned paper cannot be done. A 
>> regard as having contributed to the initiation of the paper, thus A prefer 
>> to be add as a co-correspondence author if appropriate.
>> 
>> First, can the paper deserve a retraction, and second, can B deserve a 
>> co-author?
>> 
>> Flemming
>> 
>> 
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