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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

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Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#71

Post by l33tman »

tuxxy wrote: post #27
est31 wrote: post #20

The discovery is beyond doubt deserving of the award. It was also awarded only 8 years after the publication. It's a bit sad though that Virginijus Šikšnys didn't get any credit for the discovery, because his paper sent over a month earlier was rejected by Cell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginijus_%C5%A0ik%C5%A1nys#P... Edit: The Nobel award paper writes this on his findings: https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2…

Why is academia (at least in the physical sciences) so competitive? My partner is a molecular biologist and she can't collaborate with anyone outside of her lab because of the fear that they collaborators will take their research before they get a chance to publish it. It seems this method of performing groundbreaking research and science is horrifically detrimental to our collective progress. There's no reason for t…

This effect even exists within the same lab (been there, seen it). It's a horrible environment.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#72

Post by [deleted] »

nextos wrote: post #70
tuxxy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is academia (at least in the physical sciences) so competitive? My partner is a molecular biologist and she can't collaborate with anyone outside of her lab because of the fear that they collaborators will take their research before they get a chance to publish it. It seems this method of performing groundbreaking research and science is horrifically detrimental to our collective progress. There's no reason for t…

Well, and what about Francis Mojica who discovered CRISPR in bacteria?! He certainly deserved at least 1/3 of the award.

[deleted]

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#73

Post by RoutinePlayer »

jcims wrote: post #16
pseudolus wrote: post #3

There's a documentary on Netflix "Human Nature" that discusses the history of CRISPR and features interviews with both Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna. [0][1][2] [0] https://www.netflix.com/title/81220944 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1UkCfDnn6c [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Nature_(2019_film)

I've heard a number of interviews/podcasts with Jennifer 'The Dude' Doudna about CRISPR/Cas9 over the years. Usually a great listen, she's pretty funny and from all indications has that great combo of taking her work seriously but not herself.

The part of the documentary where she relates the Hitler dream, weighing in on the impact of her work is a poignant moment. A very responsible scientist.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#74

Post by lvs »

natechols wrote: post #54
tuxxy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is academia (at least in the physical sciences) so competitive? My partner is a molecular biologist and she can't collaborate with anyone outside of her lab because of the fear that they collaborators will take their research before they get a chance to publish it. It seems this method of performing groundbreaking research and science is horrifically detrimental to our collective progress. There's no reason for t…

1) Because human beings aggressively pursue their self-interest, which extends to getting new credit for scientific discoveries. 2) Because scientific discovery often requires multiple competing approaches (because you don't know which one will work in advance), and top-down control tends to discourage that. 3) Because biomedical discovery is not an inherently directed process most of the time, and top-down control w…

No, while those things are factors, the core problem arises from the structure of the funding and career advancement system. These are systems we've constructed, not aspects of human nature. It's sink-or-swim, and even those swimming are only barely doing so.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#75

Post by moralestapia »

fgblanch wrote: post #57
Upvoter33 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a case of "poor" Mojica. He discovered some important properties around the palindromic nature of DNA in bacteria, as did others in Japan. While it was important, it is not the same level of contribution as Doudna and Charpentier. I don't think that there is much debate around this.

I disagree, he did not discovered a property, he discovered and described the CRISPR mechanism. He deserves a big part of the credit, without CRISPR there is no CRISPR-cas9. With this award, they are neglecting basic research and just rewarding the applications. Btw I highly recommend to read the Mojica story it is fascinating how he found it and understood how it worked.

>I disagree, he did not discovered a property, he discovered and described the CRISPR mechanism.

Exactly this! You cannot downplay his influence, at all. He also did speculate on plenty of those applications. Really weird to have him excluded.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#76

Post by stainforth »

natechols wrote: post #54
tuxxy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is academia (at least in the physical sciences) so competitive? My partner is a molecular biologist and she can't collaborate with anyone outside of her lab because of the fear that they collaborators will take their research before they get a chance to publish it. It seems this method of performing groundbreaking research and science is horrifically detrimental to our collective progress. There's no reason for t…

1) Because human beings aggressively pursue their self-interest, which extends to getting new credit for scientific discoveries. 2) Because scientific discovery often requires multiple competing approaches (because you don't know which one will work in advance), and top-down control tends to discourage that. 3) Because biomedical discovery is not an inherently directed process most of the time, and top-down control w…

I don't know why you saw "cooperative" and changed it to "top-down control"

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#77

Post by natechols »

lvs wrote: post #74
natechols wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Because human beings aggressively pursue their self-interest, which extends to getting new credit for scientific discoveries. 2) Because scientific discovery often requires multiple competing approaches (because you don't know which one will work in advance), and top-down control tends to discourage that. 3) Because biomedical discovery is not an inherently directed process most of the time, and top-down control w…

No, while those things are factors, the core problem arises from the structure of the funding and career advancement system. These are systems we've constructed, not aspects of human nature. It's sink-or-swim, and even those swimming are only barely doing so.

You are assuming that the construction of the system has nothing to do with human nature in the first place. I think there are a lot of godawful perverse incentives embedded in our current system, and I suspect we could come up with a much better system if we started over from scratch, but I am extremely skeptical that an ideal system would be any less dependent on competition. And in the current context, the burden is on those who say we should redesign the system to prove that their hypothetical ideal system will perform better in practice than the one that turns out all of these CRISPR-related discoveries at a furious pace.

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#78

Post by natechols »

stainforth wrote: post #76
natechols wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Because human beings aggressively pursue their self-interest, which extends to getting new credit for scientific discoveries. 2) Because scientific discovery often requires multiple competing approaches (because you don't know which one will work in advance), and top-down control tends to discourage that. 3) Because biomedical discovery is not an inherently directed process most of the time, and top-down control w…

I don't know why you saw "cooperative" and changed it to "top-down control"

I take it you haven't met very many university research professors. (But I probably should have used the term "central planning" instead since that is much closer to what I meant - the problem of over-coordination when a more distributed approach would have ultimately worked better.)

Re: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020

#80

Post by divbzero »

sampo wrote: post #38

I got interested in how often the chemistry prize goes to biology/biochemistry. 2011: quasicrystals →2012: G protein-coupled receptors 2013: modelling complex chemical systems 2014: super-resolved fluorescence microscopy →2015: studies of DNA repair 2016: molecular machines 2017: cryo-electron microscopy for biomolecules →2018: directed evolution of proteins 2019: lithium ion batteries →2020: genome editing So let's…

The prizes in 2014 (fluorescence microscopy) and 2017 (cryo-electron microscopy) weren’t strictly for biology but were tools for studying biology. Including them would make it 6 out of 10.
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