daughart

All seems sensical to me.

Federal patent law defines patent infringement as “mak[ing], us[ing], offer[ing] to sell, or sell[ing]” a patented invention. Not an attorney, but seems like it would be quite a stretch to argue that becoming infected with a virus would fall under one of those categories.

Ideology has been and will always be a guiding force in science. Western genetics was heavily influenced by capitalism. Many concepts in Soviet genetics ended up being closer to correct than competing Western theories, although it took a while for this to be appreciated (e.g., epigenetics).

Philosophers of science Collins and Pinch have an excellent entry-level book on this called "The Golem" that I would strongly recommend to anyone interested. Very accessible and not overly philosophical/jargon-y.

Just like Howard Stern (note, SiriusXM also owns Spotify). They traded a broader audience and greater influence for stability and gigantic paychecks. E.g., in Howard's case, even though his personal influence shrunk, his importance to Sirius/Spotify grew as a fraction of the subscriber base is dedicated to one talent and would otherwise unsubscribe. Howard's deal has been renewed a number of times now. I can't blame anyone involved.

You know that all US parents are published, after approximately 1 year, in publicly searchable databases, right? I’m sure NIAID had better things to do… like fighting a pandemic.

The real question is why you are so afraid of the vaccine, so as to promote FUD? Or is it just displaced fear from a virus demonstrating that you’re not quite as in charge of your life as you thought?

Why in the hell would big Pharma pay any media to promote the vaccines? Most of the revenue is already booked from state actors, and they're literally selling the cure to a global pandemic. They don't need to juice demand - such a ploy could only hurt them. Frankly, continuation of the pandemic via poor adoption of the vaccine would increase future business in the form of boosters, etc.

The thing I don't understand is some people's implied or sometimes explicitly expressed belief that medical researchers are suppressing promising COVID treatments for some reason.

Clinical trial research is perhaps the most complex and challenging type of research to get right. It's necessary to be critical of clinical research and meta-analyses, so pointing out serious research flaws doesn't mean someone is rooting against a safe, effective, cheap COVID treatment. The VAST majority of candidate drugs don't work well even for the intended indication, let alone have serendipitous effect in a different disease.

Unless I missed where the article revealed the scientist's gender, the interviewee may not be male. I agree it was an enjoyable read, though!

And the villagers were the ones to blame in "the boy who cried wolf".

This is a debatable point. Mullis definitely patented PCR, but there's a legitimate argument Har Gobind Khorana (another Nobel winner, for separate contributions to biology) actually invented PCR almost two decades prior. According to the oral history of the Khorana lab, the PCR method was used routinely going back to 1970, but they didn't consider it important enough to publish separately as a method. However, they did describe the method clearly in a 1971 publication.

“The principles for extensive synthesis of the duplexed tRNA genes which emerge from the present work are the following. The DNA duplex would be denatured to form single strands. This denaturation step would be carried out in the presence of a sufficiently large excess of the two appropriate primers. Upon cooling, one would hope to obtain two structures, each containing the full length of the template strand appropriately complexed with the primer. DNA polymerase will be added to complete the process of repair replication. Two molecules of the original duplex should result. The whole cycle could be repeated, there being added every time a fresh dose of the enzyme.” - Kleppe, K., E. Ohtsuka, R. Kleppe, I. Molineux, and H. G. Khorana. "Studies on polynucleotides: XCVI. Repair replication of short synthetic DNA's as catalyzed by DNA polymerases." Journal of molecular biology 56, no. 2 (1971): 341-361.

The use of thermostable polymerase (Taq) was a separate innovation, which Mullis also didn't invent.

Relevant quote from Henry Erlich, who led the Cetus PCR group:

“On the one hand I was delighted to see that PCR as a technology was recognized by the Nobel Committee, but I was frustrated that awarding the prize to Mullis alone certified an account which Kary had created which was not true.

Mullis had a great idea, which he followed up with years of misrepresentation and self-promotion. Rewriting history was more productive than writing papers. He never really got it to work. It would have been appropriate to include others on the award.”

No citation for the illustration of the mechanism of action, maybe JAMA or NEJM?

What makes you think sexual selection led to increased intelligence in humans? In the grand scheme of things, I'm not sure humans are even that sexually dimorphic TBH, I believe the size dimorphism is actually pretty small compared to other mammals.