Minimum information requirements: neither bandits in the Attic nor bats in the belfry.

In respose to de Marco and colleagues 'Minimum Information for Protein Functional Evaluation,' I observe that they run the risk of imposing a Procrustean solution to the problem of rigorously reporting experimental results involving recombinant proteins. While they rightly identify a need for experimental reporting standards defined by their scientific community, they wrongly assign this role to 'Minimum information' guidelines. In my response I clarify the role and development processes of minimum information standards, and relate a similar experience that we had in the ProteomeBinders Consortium, that led to a distinction between minimum information guidelines for describing a binder and its efficiency as a molecular tool, and the need to define community standards for experimental binder assessment.