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 <[log in to unmask]>:
> 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
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 5/14/14 12:41 PM, "Nat Echols" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 10:26 AM, Mark Wilson <[log in to unmask]> 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
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