“Heroes of CRISPR” Disputed | Hacker News Reader

“Heroes of CRISPR” Disputed

the-scientist.com

114 pointsGatsky28 comments

I worked at the Broad in a past life. I find it shocking that Cell let Lander publish his article without a conflict of interest statement, considering a) a key patent just went into interference proceedings and b) most people assume a Nobel will be issued in the not-too-distant future and the Broad would benefit greatly from having sponsored Nobel-winning science.

Take, for example, Church's newly released comment that he was NOT "aware of Zhang’s efforts" like Lander claims he was in the article when his lab tried to move CRISPR into a mammalian system. Zhang et al. are trying to paint the move to a mammalian system as a key moment of invention, making it patent-worthy. If another scientist's first instinct is to do the exact same thing, it suggests that such a move is "obvious to a person skilled in the art" and casts doubt on the novelty of Zhang's work.

Working in the Church lab (although not on CRISPR) at the time both papers came out, I recall everyone being surprised at Zhang's efforts even at the time of publication!

I sat next to you and I wasn't surprised.

Maybe I just didn't pick up on the buzz. (Just so people have context its a large lab divided between several physical rooms across two buildings. I was a relatively new grad student at the time.)

The most remarkable feature of this discord is that the media discussion started based on a comment on PubMed by Dr. Doudna [1]. Just 5 minutes ago as of the time of this comment, another key player (Dr. Charpentier) has written a follow-up comment on PubMed [2].

This is the type of realtime feedback that would not have happened in a public forum just a few years ago.

(Disclosure: I have worked at the Broad and likely will again in the future.)

1 = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26771483/#cm26771483_1...

2 = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26771483/#cm26771483_1...

Agreed...peer review, a "scientific method" cornerstone and safeguard for years appears to be moving online, in real time...

Both your URLs go to the same page (was going to say they were the same URL, but they're not). Maybe [1] was supposed to be the below?

[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25430774

You are correct; they both go to the same page. One is a direct link to Doudna's comment, the other to Charpentier's comment on the same page... but since the page is so short, there is nothing to scroll to, so they look like they are the same link.

From a slightly different angle, Lior Pachter focuses on how science is often a pyramid scheme of sorts:

https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/the-heroes-of-c...

>There is a more cynical view of the PI model, namely that by running large labs PIs are able to benefit from a scientific roulette of their own making. PIs can claim credit for successes while blaming underlings for failures. Even one success can fund numerous failures, and so the wheel spins faster and faster…the PI always wins.

>Lander concludes his perspective by writing that “the [CRISPR] narrative…is a wonderful lesson for a young person contemplating a life in science”. That may be true of the CRISPR narrative, but the lesson of his narrative is that young persons should not count on leaders in their field to recognize their work.

I was about to say the same thing, but Lior's writeup is much more straightforward.

I started doing research in formal methods but later moved to computational biology. Half a decade later I'm still surprised by the concepts of PI, last author and lack of blind reviews.

How can anyone that does not even understand the main ideas in my works sign it as a major author?

I frequently have worked with people in Bob Langer's lab, which is an absolutely enormous group.

Most of them described it as being a place where virtually any piece of equipment you wanted to use was available to you, but you will have very little supervision. For a scientist who has a crazy idea that doesn't want to be micromanaged, that can be an ideal environment. Those crazy ideas are the most likely to be published in Science or Nature if they work, in which case, having a famous PI like Langer or Church helps a surprising amount.

So, yes, being in a huge lab is a bit of a pyramid scheme, and probably gives undue credit to the PIs. But, for the right person, it can be the perfect environment to test your ideas and, with a bit of luck, publish some high profile papers.

I wonder if the patent war over CRISPR will ever be relevant, given the discovery of Cpf1 and other Cas9-like molecules http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(15)01200-3

Does anyone know if the existing CRISPR patents are specific to Cas9 or do they cover any RNA-guided endonucleases?

See: http://www.ipscell.com/2016/01/patent-expert-weighs-in-on-cr... and https://law.stanford.edu/2015/12/29/the-crispr-patent-interf... They're mostly specific to Cas9.

Part of the problem here is the legal environment created by Bayh–Dole, Stanford v. Roche, and their fallout. These universities do not play a substantive role in the development of these technologies, but they get the IP because researcher are obliged to sign away their rights in order to get federal funds. Inventions are the natural property of their inventors, and we should make it harder to compel them to preemptively sigh away those rights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayh%E2%80%93Dole_Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University_v._Roche_M....

Stanford v. Roche seems to say that Bayh-Dole does NOT allow inventors to sign away their rights to the University or the Government.

As I understand it, Stanford v Roche only said that the assignments that they made the researchers sign were not sufficiently stringent. And not universities just compel researchers to sigh a more explicit and complete assignment.

It's disheartening that Cell would even publish a non-scientific opintionated fluff article about "Heroes" under the same banner as its peer-reviewed research articles.

Such an article is fine for a magazine, or an adjunct comment, but not a scientific journal.

It's a common format for a flagship wide-area journal (like Cell or Science) to have editorial content at the front of the journal and the more hard-core research papers at the back. The editorial content can be breaking news, political/social context (e.g., Federal budgets, legislation), review articles, summaries and context for the technical articles at the back, and position papers seeking community comment.

Getting a paper in the front pages of the journal is a matter of invitation, and getting one in the back is considered ... how to say it ... the righteous way?

Summed up nicely by Alexis Verger on Twitter: "#CRISPRFacts: CRISPR is so powerful it can edit its own history."

People will forget about the attribution disputes in 100 years but from my reading, it looks like CRISPR may become the greatest achievement in biology since the theory of evolution by natural selection.

I don't really see that. It's mainly a more convenient method for genetic alteration. We previously had tools that did this, it was just harder. And bacteria did all the really hard work.

But the iteration speed that this enables is like going from punch cards to continuous deployment.

Carmack on patents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=451283

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10934783 and marked it off-topic.

I thought that his being frustrated with the fact that independent research and development could independently come up with the same idea as someone else was very related to the topic? :(

Only generically; generic tangents aren't great for ontopicness. But the real problem is that it wasn't a reply to the very specific and informed comment we detached it from.

OK, I understand that. Well then, keep up the good work. HN remains in good health and hands.

Only three can get the Nobel Prize. Let the wars begin!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com