Dear colleagues,
1) I think Ajees et al. should make available the raw diffraction images of
the structure in paper that has caused so much literary commotion, unless
they haven't already done so. Perhaps simply put them in an open ftp server?
As I imagine, unless I have missed something, these diffraction images were
obtained with grant money, so they should be available to the community.
Isn't it?
This would allow other scientists to evaluate them as much as they wanted
and publish many more papers about the validity or falsehood of the
conclusions drawn in the original and (now) infamous Ajees et al. paper.
That's how Science -in my opinion- ought to be.
2) I agree that depositing raw images in the PDB or elsewhere would be a
great thing for everybody - I usually and happily deposit all the structure
factors that I've used to obtain and refine a structure -.
However, raw images are becoming larger and larger with the newer and
fancier detectors and this trend might not stabilize in quite a while.
Although disk space is becoming as well cheaper as time goes by, I think the
ratio between these two factors is still unpractical for huge storage
purposes. Unless a major development in data storage is accomplished.
As an anecdote: during a trip to a synchrotron in the American Midwest, a
single dataset (1 degree x 360) was something like 27GB of raw images!!! We
managed to collect 1.5 TB of data in about 2 days (having to run -of course
always in a hurry- to the nearest computer store to get a few more external
hard-drives to backup and take with us all our data).
Albeit of being a great option for many of us, I insist. I cannot imagine
the burden that storing so much data would be for the PDB or any public
database. Not only for taking care of the amount of disk space or storage
support required, but as people have mentioned here taking care of them
("curating" them, since disks do crash, as we know, and optical media get
irremediably scratched) would be a tremendous and likely expensive endeavor.
3) Perhaps, we should responsibly store the data ourselves, nicely stored in
media that "should" allow us to retrieve it after many years (quite a task
by itself already; forget the clay tablets though). As probably many of us
have done for quite some time.
And when asked, send the data to anyone who is interested. But... don't they
have already problems accessing the tapes from the first lunar landing?
4) In any case, we should not forget the subject of storing and
accessibility of the crystallographic raw images in a public database.
Perhaps more journals should accept open letters about this subject, which
is important as well as complicated, and create a much larger discussion
than this one.
All the best,
Jordi
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Jordi Benach, PhD
MX Beamline Scientist
ALBA Synchrotron Light Facility
Edifici Ciències. Mòdul C-3 Central
Campus Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, SPAIN
Phone: +34 93 592 4333
FAX: +34 93 592 4302
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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