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Comment by butner | Hacker News Reader

The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson attempts to chronicle this in detail. The narrative has UC/Doudna making the fundamental contributions. And that the leap to human cells was "trivial" made by Broad/Zhang. Anyone have any perspective on how they were characterized?

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While informative, I think it was mentioned in the book that Doudna was the one who asked him to write it about her, so I think it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I thought isaacson did a pretty good job in trying to make it objective, but it does read a bit like PR at times which is kind of unfortunate for a topic on science. I guess it's been the same way for other historical discoveries as well, especially given the economic stakes involved. I find self promotion a bit debasing but it seems to be important of society like it or not.

That's a generous way of putting it. Just the first chapter nearly had me putting the book down as it read like a press release written on behalf of the scientist. It gets less painful and I understand that authors choose to write books about subjects that interest them but it feels like there's a definite difference in objectivity from his previous works.

The chapters on Watson are super interesting. If Isaacson had written the book primarily about Watson, it likely would've been at the same level of Steve Jobs.

this is the first book by isaacson that i read and i doubt i'd like to read any other. the bias in the narration, while duly acknowledged, forces him to paint other people (aka other side) so monstrously—at times—that it's impossible to take his criticisms seriously. that said i liked quite a few people aside from doudna (for example i think emmanuelle charpentier is badass and quite rightly the sort of hero we need—working with elegance and loads of fun).

It’s very unfortunate to read such a statement - Isaacson’s “The Innovators” is an amazing book that never lost its objectivity throughout my readings.

If that book is a bit one-sided, it has to be mentioned that (as other comments in this thread have noted) the other side also had their share of one-sided publications highlighting the Broad Institute's contribution and minimizing the merits of the other scientists involved, such as this article by Eric Lander: https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(15)01705-5 (reviewed here: https://genotopia.scienceblog.com/573/a-whig-history-of-cris...).

That book is so annoying. Disjointed towards the end and no doubt rushed out because of COVID. Doudna alone on the cover. A real disappointment and woefully little explanation of how CRISPR works.

She has admitted several times that her team tried and failed to make the leap to human cells.

In light of what seems to be this fairly in depth and data based decision by USPTO, maybe PR? :-)

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