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For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

quantamagazine.org

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Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#241

Post by Retric »

derektank wrote: post #231
Retric wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalists believing what you tell them says nothing about if the underlying work is actually significant. The legacy of bad science being picked up is why this is a bad idea, even you personally don’t think it’s an issue the risk reward isn’t about just you.

>The legacy of bad science being picked up is why this is a bad idea, even you personally don’t think it’s an issue the risk reward isn’t about just you Who do you believe should be the gatekeeper here? Why can’t the scientist and the news outlets be trusted to make the decision about whether to publish or not themselves? Why can’t the general public be trusted to evaluate the quality of the news outlets they read?

> Why can’t the scientist and the news outlets be trusted to make the decision about whether to publish or not themselves? Why can’t the general public be trusted to evaluate the quality of the news outlets they read?

Because the scientists involved and reporters manifestly do a bad job about picking what is or isn’t groundbreaking and more importantly have various incentives to hype things up.

CERN scientists with the whole FTL neutrino particle were actively skeptical of the results and still held a press conference on the topic. As to reporters, you’re welcome to go through the published stories about the topic and notice how rarely getting the distance wrong was brought up even when the scientists involved where skeptical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_OPERA_faster-than-light_n...

The general public is utterly incompetent at judging science. Homeopathy is the tip of the iceberg of ignorance.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#242

Post by jibal »

Aerolfos wrote: post #118
hparadiz wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Exoplanets also aren't planets. Imagine writing this.

Actually, that is the IAU stance. And their definition for exoplanet includes small, non-rounded objects orbiting stars which would be asteroids (or comets or whatever) if they happened to be around the Sun. All that debacle around dwarf planets to prepare for future observations, and yet the distinction ceases to apply the moment you go outside the Oort cloud... But really, that's just the naming systems being bad,…

This is quite wrong.

https://www.iau.org/IAU/Science/What-we-do/Pluto-and-the-Dev...

"More generally, a planet:

a. orbits its host star, just as the Earth and Jupiter orbit the Sun,

b. is large enough to be mostly round, and

c. must have an important influence on the orbital stability of the other objects in its neighbourhood."

Exoplanets are planets by that definition where the host star is not our Sun:

"Researchers have found hundreds of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, that reside outside our solar system. "

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#243

Post by throwaway894345 »

noosphr wrote: post #238
hallway_monitor wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outside observer, it does seem that the whole process is tedious, capricious, and corrupt. No wonder academia is crumbling - it deserves to, and it needs to be replaced with a new, better system.

[flagged]

What does this mean “it’s the left that’s the problem”? The right’s solution to academic reform is literal pseudoscience. And I don’t mean this as whataboutism—I’m responding to the implication that some political faction other than the left has the right answer, and I don’t know who that would be.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#244

Post by azan_ »

merksittich wrote: post #54

Science News has a more balanced take, with additional quotes from peers. > Some have also grumbled about Adamala’s efforts to draw attention to the work, which she says was rejected by Cell after one reviewer said SpudCells were not real biology. She then sent the 190-page manuscript to journalists, under embargo, even before she had uploaded it to the preprint server bioRxiv, where her colleagues could read and ass…

The usual way of doing things is completely broken system.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#245

Post by azan_ »

noosphr wrote: post #238
hallway_monitor wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outside observer, it does seem that the whole process is tedious, capricious, and corrupt. No wonder academia is crumbling - it deserves to, and it needs to be replaced with a new, better system.

[flagged]

> Anyone pointing out the obvious - that peer review is broken and science hasn't worked in 40 years - is at best a flat Earther.

Yes, if someone claims that science hasn't worked (what does it even mean?) for 40 years then he's not that far from being flat Eather. It's hard to expect other side to be reasonable while making such absurd claims.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#246

Post by bouchard »

noosphr wrote: post #218
bouchard wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “It’s an unusual way of doing things,” says Kerstin Göpfrich, a synthetic biologist at Heidelberg University. That's being kind; it's a complete overreaction, simply put.

It's an over reaction if you have a decade to argue with morons. I've had papers sit in peer review for two years, get rejected, then when they are finally published the other editors of the journal that rejected them came crawling in asking for the next paper in the series and promising the front page. Worse they ran a news story about our paper _in the journal that rejected it_ saying how groundbreaking it was. The…

What field are you in that you'd actually wait two years, rather than retract your submission and go somewhere else?

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#248

Post by abrookewood »

cmiles74 wrote: post #222
merksittich wrote: post #54

Science News has a more balanced take, with additional quotes from peers. > Some have also grumbled about Adamala’s efforts to draw attention to the work, which she says was rejected by Cell after one reviewer said SpudCells were not real biology. She then sent the 190-page manuscript to journalists, under embargo, even before she had uploaded it to the preprint server bioRxiv, where her colleagues could read and ass…

I thought the NY Times article was pretty good, they had some nice illustrations. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/07/01/science/spudc...

That is way more comprehensible for me at least.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#249

Post by derektank »

Retric wrote: post #241
derektank wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The legacy of bad science being picked up is why this is a bad idea, even you personally don’t think it’s an issue the risk reward isn’t about just you Who do you believe should be the gatekeeper here? Why can’t the scientist and the news outlets be trusted to make the decision about whether to publish or not themselves? Why can’t the general public be trusted to evaluate the quality of the news outlets they read?

> Why can’t the scientist and the news outlets be trusted to make the decision about whether to publish or not themselves? Why can’t the general public be trusted to evaluate the quality of the news outlets they read? Because the scientists involved and reporters manifestly do a bad job about picking what is or isn’t groundbreaking and more importantly have various incentives to hype things up. CERN scientists with t…

You didn’t answer the actually interesting question I posed, who should be the gatekeeper instead?

Yes, yes, journalists and scientists have bad incentives and the general public is dumb. You’re not exactly setting the world on fire with that observation. The problem is that there is no better alternative. Any conceivable gatekeeper to scientific knowledge will be no smarter than the research scientists producing the results and will certainly have problematic incentives of their own. And a gatekeeper will also lack the local knowledge that might determine whether the information might helpful or harmful to the potential reader.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#250

Post by thaumasiotes »

Retric wrote: post #236
adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other quotes that do think it’s significant. Why do you think the more critical scientists are more correct? > John Glass, a synthetic biologist at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, Calif., who was not involved in the study. “It is dazzling that she has put these things all together,” he said. > “We’re going to remember this moment,” said Roseanna Zia, a computational biologist at the University of…

> Why do you think the more critical scientists are more correct? I am not qualified to make a judgement here, the point is following the process is better than jumping the gun on principle. It literally doesn’t matter if it’s eventually considered groundbreaking research or not, jumping the gun is a bad idea.

> I am not qualified to make a judgement here, the point is following the process is better than jumping the gun on principle.

Why? The process is quite obviously net negative; we'd get better results with no process at all.

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