Dr. Taylor Robbins wrote:
>I've been away from the newsgroups for a few days and was dismayed to see
>some of the responses to my post. I recommended Redasoft's new sequence
>analysis program to everyone because I was highly impressed by it. I thought
>we had an open forum here to discuss ideas and help each other work more
>efficiently.
We have an open forum here to discuss ideas related to metabolic control
analysis and biochemical thermodynamics. Perhaps you would care to explain
what your message has to do with either of these?
>I thought other researchers would want to know about a product
>which could greatly speed up their work. Not that I should have to justify
>myself to anyone, but if you go to to PubMed and type in Robbins T you will
>actually find a total of 343 papers - not 1!
True enough, but what has that got to do with the search that Petr
described? If you go to MedLine (rather than the Science Citation Index
specified by Petr) and enter Robbins T as author and cloning as subject you
get three papers (not 343), the most recent from 1995. OK, that's two more
than Petr found, but who cares?
>Perhaps the reason you are so
>interested in my post is because you, or Petr Kuzmic, are in direct
>competition with Redasoft. It is interesting to note that Mr. Kuzmic does
>work for a scientific software company.
>>By recommending Redasoft, I was only trying to improve other scientists'
>level of research. I do not like being criticized by hypocrites and find it
>sad that our time cannot be put to better use.
>If we charitably accept that Dr Robbins may be as innocent as he would like
us to think, there is still one question that puzzles me: why does he give
his message a title that immediately suggests advertising spam? When was
the last time any of us saw a genuine non-advertising message entitled
anything like "Great New ... Software"?
It is also interesting to note what he does _not_ say in his protestations
of innocence: nowhere does he say "I have no commercial interest in
Redasoft or any of its products" or anything equivalent. He also ignores
Petr's suggestion that he could give some indication of his institutional
affiliation.
athel
Athel Cornish-Bowden
athel at ibsm.cnrs-mrs.frhttp://ir2lcb.cnrs-mrs.fr/~athel/homepage.htm
---
