Hi,
I mostly agree with Artem, except on one point:
As long as people publish most of the details necessary to reproduce
the
materials (protein samples and crystals) used in structure
determination -
the crystals may be reproduced 'by persons skilled in the art'.
There is no
need to even store or distribute specific plasmid/clone DNA samples
any more
as long as relevant DNA sequences are retained (thank you, synthetic
DNA
providers!).
I understand that it may look today like a romantic idea, but good
science is done in labs that cannot easily pay the fees of those fancy
synthetic DNA providers. Storage and distribution of this kind of
material is therefore still important. Of course, there is a limit:
you cannot be expected to send crystals all around the world, let
aside other planets. In general, good common sense should be enough,
from plasmids to images. As Eleanor pointed out, we should keep those
materials available, because they are primarily our responsibility.
Artem is right in that many reports simply don't provide enough
information to reproduce the results. The most important reason to
have such information is not to go against fraud, I am also an
optimist here, but to be able to reproduce the results so that we can
produce new results from them. This information should be in the
papers or in 'supplementary files' or wherever. Some authors when
contacted will be happy to provide you with the info, but others never
answer your letters.
Science should be about collaboration and trust, shouldn't it? That
would make things easier and cheaper. Or we can implement rules and
more rules like the security freaks do and we all suffer now when
travelling.
Best,
Miguel
--
Miguel Ortiz Lombardía
Architecture et Fonction des Macromolécules Biologiques
UMR6098 ( CNRS, U. de Provence, U. de la Méditerranée )
Case 932
163 Avenue de Luminy
13288 Marseille cedex 9
France
Tel : +33(0) 491 82 55 93
Fax: +33(0) 491 26 67 20
e-mail: miguel.ortiz-lombar...@afmb.univ-mrs.fr
Web: http://www.pangea.org/mol/spip.php?rubrique2
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