Author Description

This Book Is A Teaching Book On The Whole Topic Of Precision And Accuracy In Biological Crystallography, Diffraction, Scattering, Microscopies, And Spectroscopies. It Starts From The Basic Physics Of Describing Systematic And Random Errors. That Said, We Can Never Determine The Truth, Only An Approximation To It. If, However, We Combine One Method's Results With Another We Arrive At Accuracy. Where Then Does That Leave The 'single Method'? Each Method On Its Own Can Legitimately Be Described As Precise When The Random Errors Inherent In It Have Been Minimised. Theory Can Be A Powerful Instrument To Discern Truth And, Classically, Makes Predictions To Be Assessed Experimentally. Today A Different Kind Of Theory Has Emerged As We Can Enjoy The Fruits Of Databases And Make Predictions Based On Them. The Assessment Of Success, Or Confidence In A Prediction, Is The Closeness Of Fit Of That Prediction To Precise Experimental Structures. This Book Is About Each Experimental Method Used To Determine A 3d Biological Macromolecule Structure And Its Dynamics. I Assess How Well Two Or More Methods Agree, In Their Various Possible Combinations. This Leads Us To The Accuracy Of What We Know And Our Best Chance Therefore To Understand Functions. To Do This We Must Also Understand The Uncertainties In Our Determination Of Atomic Positions In Our Static Structures, And Also How Close We Think We Are Getting To The Situation In A Living Cell-- Provided By Publisher.