DK wrote:
> Old fashion. Today, most young faculty members, postdocs and
> grad students are convinced that you do experiment until you get
> desired result that increases chances of getting a grant or publishing
> a paper in prestigious journal.
Unfortunately true. But it should be pointed out that this procedure
involves the risk of being found wrong - highly embarassing. On several
occasions I had to correct results published by other workers.
One frequent reason: Enzyme kinetic experiments performed with too few
data points over a too narrow concentration range. Mdr1 (and presumably
other ABC-type ATPases) has no co-operation between ATP-binding sites?
Sorry, if you do that carefully, you'll find 4 co-operating sites!
Interesting, because the molecule contains 2 consensus sequences for
ATP-binding (Walker-sequences), so either binding occurs also to
non-Walker sequences or (more likely) there is co-operation between
molecules.
But of course, if you do such studies carefully, you can't publish 5
papers a year, and that affects your promotion prospects. Sad is that
it's true and true is that it's sad.
