On 29/06/12 19:59, Justin A. Lemkul wrote:
Wouldn't it be nice to create a table of "standard settings" for each
forcefield
in the gmx documentation (with lit references of course)?
Well, anyone is welcome to submit anything they feel would be useful... ;)
I have considered this in the past, but have rejected the thought every
time it comes to mind. It would be nice if there was a central
repository of such parameters, but then likely a simulation becomes "do
this, not that" with no required thought from the end user.
If you make
simulations a black box, everyone expects them to automatically work
without fail.
Which should be what it has to be in an ideal world :)
Apart from that, it wouldn't mean to make them a black box -quite the
opposite. Giving parameters *with* an explanation of them, literature
quotes etc. would give tremendous insight to lots of people that often
just use "the lab's standard .mdp" and tweak it.
This doesn't mean everyone would expect them to work without fail, it
would give however a good starting point.
The other objection I have always had is the continual improvement of
the field. If Gromacs puts out an "official" or "standard" list of what
to do, it is always subject to change and then becomes incumbent upon a
Gromacs contributor to verify its accuracy frequently. My personal fear
is that this becomes an untenable task.
Isn't that however the point of a scientific community -sharing and
updating knowledge? We use to rely on papers, but that's far more
inefficient than having a centralized repo where we can share and
discuss informations.
Then in the case of an error,
someone's whole Ph.D. could go out the window...
I suspect without this even more Ph.D's get wasted -because they don't
really know what to do and just crank things together without really
getting it. Not all of us have received proper education on MD (I didn't
for example -I had to learn everything by myself and I am a total newbie
even after a couple years) I mean, at least it gives a good starting
point for people.
In the end, I think it's always safe to ask the user to do a bit of
legwork to understand the force field he or she wishes to use. The
knowledge gained from an hour of reading will save a lot of potential
headaches.
Sure, and in fact I would expect such a page etc. to *start* with
literature references and even directly quoting papers when explaining
why certain params and not others.
I would reject any attempt to include such information in the manual
(lest its settings become "official"), but if someone wants to put up a
wiki page on the website with clear warnings and disclaimers, they are
welcome to do so.
I am probably the least qualified person to do so, but I'd enjoy to
collaborate.
m.
Just my $0.02.
-Justin
--
Massimo Sandal, Ph.D.
http://devicerandom.org
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