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I would like to point out that this outright fabrication remains an isolated incident. There are over 50,000 crystal structures in the PDB, which means that this is only ~0.02% of the total. This is all quite bad, but let's not overstate the problem. Maybe such report is not a great idea after all - don't you think it will help the next troublemaker to fabricate structures better? :) I wonder if there are any structures from the author in question that were not fabricated. After all, some serious mistakes were made in 2hr0 (how can you not know about bulk solvent and B-factor variation?). There is 1BGX which was not on retraction list (I guess since it was "done" at Temple University, not UAB), but it looks weird too: the B-factors of main chain and side chain atoms are not much different from each other and this 2.3A-diffracting crystal has very few crystal contacts (it's the Taq DNA polymerase in complex with inhibitory Fab and the whole heavy chain makes no crystal contacts at all which is probably unique). On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 15:30 -0500, Ibrahim Moustafa wrote: > You are absolutely right, more information describing to what extents these > structures were falsified will be valuable to the community. Actually, it > will be more useful if the investigators can publish their report as an > article in Acta D (as a case study for tracking falsified structures). > > I have a suggestion (actually a request) to the expertise in the field to > write a kind of review article about "sources of error in crystallography > and how to hunt these errors". It will be even better if it is written > considering the non-crystallographers (scientists who use the structural > information - like the co-authors on structural papers). This will help to > educate the non-crystallographers how to look at the structures critically. > > Ibrahim > -- Edwin Pozharski, PhD, Assistant Professor University of Maryland, Baltimore ---------------------------------------------- When the Way is forgotten duty and justice appear; Then knowledge and wisdom are born along with hypocrisy. When harmonious relationships dissolve then respect and devotion arise; When a nation falls to chaos then loyalty and patriotism are born. ------------------------------ / Lao Tse /