Studying the folding patterns of protein molecules can help microbiologists better understand cellular processes as well as some diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, that are caused by proteins that have misfolded. The folding of these complicated molecules can be simulated on computers, but it takes a lot of processor power and time for even expensive supercomputers to do this.

A group of researchers at Stanford University developed software that can be used to distribute the processing of data to anyone who is willing to donate time on their idle personal computers. As a result, the researchers have been able to achieve protein-folding simulations that are far better than those other computing methods have done. Which statement best describes the work of these researchers?

The work is not scientific because the data are not processed in one location.
The work is not scientific because the simulations are not reproducible.
The researchers applied creativity to solve a problem in running an experiment.
The researchers used only well-established scientific techniques.

Question

Studying the folding patterns of protein molecules can help microbiologists better understand cellular processes as well as some diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, that are caused by proteins that have misfolded. The folding of these complicated molecules can be simulated on computers, but it takes a lot of processor power and time for even expensive supercomputers to do this.

A group of researchers at Stanford University developed software that can be used to distribute the processing of data to anyone who is willing to donate time on their idle personal computers. As a result, the researchers have been able to achieve protein-folding simulations that are far better than those other computing methods have done. Which statement best describes the work of these researchers?

The work is not scientific because the data are not processed in one location.
The work is not scientific because the simulations are not reproducible.
The researchers applied creativity to solve a problem in running an experiment.
The researchers used only well-established scientific techniques.

umm · Answer

Welcome to QuestionCove.
Any ideas/guesses?

Vocaloid · Answer

old question but I will attempt a solution so this can be closed

I'll go through the choices one by one and explain why they're right/wrong

- The work is not scientific because the data are not processed in one location.

This is false, there's nothing in the scientific method that requires that all the data be processed in one location. In fact, there have been plenty of state-wide/country-wide/ or even continent-wide studies done when the data is collected from across a wide region.

- The work is not scientific because the simulations are not reproducible.

I can see why this might be an appealing answer but a proper scientific experiment should document the experimental conditions used to process the data in the experiment, so there should be information on what programs/conditions were used to simulate the data.

- The researchers applied creativity to solve a problem in running an experiment.

possibly, let's leave this answer alone for now

- The researchers used only well-established scientific techniques.

This is a bit subjective but my best guess is that using volunteer processing power is a pretty recent thing and wouldn't necessarily be considered well-established