About Best Practice in Protein Science

X-ray crystallography has been the Best Practice method for determining all aspects of protein structure for nearly 60 years. This includes quaternary structure and binding to ligands. All the work described in this blog is therefore not Best Practice. We need to think about how Best Practice came about and whether Best Practice should change. Best Practice is socially constructed and enforced. As far as possible, the community of scientists defining Best Practice use scientific evidence. In a complex field, such as Medicine, where we teach and learn from Authority, it is common for Best Practice to lack scientific evidence. In Medicine, the Cochrane Collaboration has a mission to examine Best Practice and, where evidence is lacking, seek to have it changed to be more evidence-based. Protein Science has also been a seemingly complex field and has largely developed as a branch of Medical Research. There is no "Cochrane Collaboration" to review the evidence base. It is up to us individual scientists to do so. More posts on this theme to follow.