The Scientific Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth (based on his new book).

My talk abstract:-

There is a massive thrust on Open Science from Governments, Organisations and Funding Agencies. Puzzlingly Trust is not emphasised. Peer review of articles with underpinning data is a tradition of crystallography including community agreed validation checks as standard to try and ensure Trust. Exemplars are IUCr’s Checkcif and PDB’s Validation Report. The question arises once editor (and their referees) and database validator are content with an article and underpinning data what are the standard uncertainties on atomic coordinates and atomic displacement parameters? Expansion of digital data archiving allows raw data preservation reaching close to objectivity in science. In law the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is sought, why not in science as well?!

My talk contents list:-

•      There is a massive thrust on Open Science from Governments, Organisations and Funding Agencies

•      Puzzlingly Trust is not emphasised. Peer review of articles with underpinning data is a tradition of crystallography including community agreed validation checks as standard to try and ensure Trust. Exemplars are IUCr’s Checkcif and PDB’s Validation Report

•      The question arises, once editor (and their referees) and database validator are content with an article and underpinning data, what are the standard uncertainties on atomic coordinates and atomic displacement parameters? These are needed because a measurement or a parameter of a model without a standard uncertainty estimate is basically rather meaningless.

•      Expansion of digital data archiving allows raw data preservation reaching close to objectivity in science

•      In law the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is sought, so why not in science as well?! The whole truth then being the raw ie primary experimental data for any published study made possible by the new digital data archives with their huge capacities these days compared with the past.