In article <3368C69A.14B6 at ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr>, Athel <athel at IR2CBM.CNRS-
MRS.FR> writes
>>"Because it is short and clearly written, the paper of Sauro & Fell
>(1987) illustrates especially well three features that experimentalists
>would strongly urge theorists to avoid: (1) unnecessarily complicated
>treatment of essentially simple concepts; (2) careless choice of
>assumptions, which result in conclusions that are not valid; (3) an
>intellectual values system within which it seems self-evident that a few
>hours of mathematical doodling can invalidate any amount of work and
>thought by experimentalists." [D. E. Atkinson (1990) pp. 3-27 in
>"Control of Metabolic Processes" (Cornish-Bowden, A. and Cardenas, M.
>L., eds.), Plenum Press, New York]
>>Paul's invented question ("Who is this uppity modeler...") is almost a
>paraphrase of point (3). I hasten to add that I do *not* share the
>implied opinion about Sauro & Fell (1987) (beyond agreeing that it is
>short and clearly written), even though I edited the book in which the
>quotation appeared.
>Athel, I'm not sure if I read you here properly but are you saying that
the contents of the short paper Sauro & Fell (87) was indeed a load of
rubbish, apart from the 'short and clear' bit? I stand by that paper
today, nobody has shown me any arguments to change my mind in the 10
years since it was published and what it says is algebraically true.
In his original letter I will not forget some of the terminology he used
which was eviently snipped out when it was published, 'shockingly
erroneous' comes to mind.
The conclusions of the paper are very easily shown and I am sure most
people in the field at the time realised it anyway. The reason I put the
paper in was to stir things up a bit and it certainly did that.
Obviously in general the conclusions of the paper will not be true and
in more complex pathways all sorts of things may happen but for the
examples given the conclusions are algebraically certain and the paper
makes it clear at the end under what conditions the conclusions do
apply. It's similar to the non-equilibrium/equilibrium arguments, under
certain conditions you can indeed say that reactions close to
equilibrium have low flux control but in general one cannot.
>>Athel
>Herbert
--
Herbert M Sauro
email: HSauro at fssc.demon.co.uk
Telephone: 01974 282428
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