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> “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

> “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.

vintagedave 3mo ago
In fairness, it's a workaround against something that likely should not have happened. Problems require creative (aka unusual) solutions.
- bouchard 3mo ago
  Rejections from journals are not uncommon and sometimes it's for somewhat questionable reasons. Uploading the manuscript to a preprint server and/or submitting to another journal, which Adamala is doing/planning to do, is the normal response. Sending it to journalists beforehand is what I consider an overreaction.
  - NuclearPM 3mo ago
    Why would it be an overreaction?
    - nullsanity 3mo ago
      [dead]
  - Conscat 3mo ago
    It would only be effective if the significance of this work is clear. They certainly felt this message needed to reach people, and that it did work makes it self evident they were probably right.
    - Retric 3mo ago
      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.
      - adjejmxbdjdn 3mo ago
        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 Missouri who was not involved in the project. Maybe you prefer scientists who put their money where their mouth is (even if that’s a conflict of interest) > When Dr. Adamala showed SpudCell to Dr. Endy… (a synthetic biologist at Stanford University) … last year, he was so awestruck that he decided to help her found Biotic, the nonprofit organization intended to create a community of SpudCell researchers. “I’m pouring my life’s work into this,” Dr. Endy said.
        Retric 3mo ago
        > 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.
        thaumasiotes 3mo ago
        > 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.
        Retric 3mo ago
  - im3w1l 3mo ago
    If you have something so truly revolutionary that everyone can see with their own two eyes how awesome it is you don't have to rely on a middleman to bless it. "Ok your loss"
    - Lerc 3mo ago
      Nobody knows how another person will see something with their eyes. What appears to be obvious and revolutionary to one person may not be so to all. Review is precisely to protect against the importance and accuracy of a work being decided by the person who is most invested in it being so.
      - stale2002 3mo ago
        Seeing as we are talking about it now, it seems like they were right that it is interesting to the public. I am not sure why you think social media attention needs to be gate kept.
      - wyldberry 3mo ago
        Whenever i sit down to read research, I remind myself of Lockheed Martin reading the USSR published research[0] on how electromagnetic waves scatter off of surfaces, and using that to fuel the initial stealth technology. The leading theory being that the USSR didn't recognize how brilliant and revolutionary ability these calculations were. Just because I can't see the immediate brilliance, doesn't mean it is not brilliant in it's own right. [0] - https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-soviet-union-accidentally-helped-america-build-f-117-nighthawk-hk-121425 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-soviet-union-acci...
        geoduck14 3mo ago
        There is a similar story with the discovery of buckey-balls. A researcher at University of Houston had data that demonstrated buckey-balls were created, but he didn't fully understand what he was looking at. Then a researcher at Rice saw the data and recognized c-60 was being created, so he bought the data and the process and then "invented" carbon balls
  - stale2002 3mo ago
    Journalists are meant to report on the news. This sounds like an interesting piece of science/news to me.
  - iJohnDoe 3mo ago
    > Sending it to journalists beforehand is what I consider an overreaction. No knowledge on this particular situation. My guess is that they wanted to protect their work by getting it out there. This prevents someone from stealing it during the peer review process.
retr0rocket 3mo ago
[dead]
noosphr 3mo ago
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 only people who think peer review still works are people who have never used it or people who have never had a novel idea in their lives.
- hallway_monitor 3mo ago
  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.
  - noosphr 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - throwaway894345 3mo ago
      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.
    - azan_ 3mo ago
      > 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.
    - cannonpr 3mo ago
      We must live in different worlds, I’ve been literally blown away by the advances I’ve seen and the new research coming out in the past 40 years. In some ways it feels like we are just getting started, especially in bio. We finally have the tools to discover the wonderful nano machines that make up life and people are using them in wonderful ways.

> “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.

vintagedave 3mo ago

In fairness, it's a workaround against something that likely should not have happened. Problems require creative (aka unusual) solutions.

bouchard 3mo ago
Rejections from journals are not uncommon and sometimes it's for somewhat questionable reasons. Uploading the manuscript to a preprint server and/or submitting to another journal, which Adamala is doing/planning to do, is the normal response. Sending it to journalists beforehand is what I consider an overreaction.
- NuclearPM 3mo ago
  Why would it be an overreaction?
  - nullsanity 3mo ago
    [dead]
- Conscat 3mo ago
  It would only be effective if the significance of this work is clear. They certainly felt this message needed to reach people, and that it did work makes it self evident they were probably right.
  - Retric 3mo ago
    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.
    - adjejmxbdjdn 3mo ago
      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 Missouri who was not involved in the project. Maybe you prefer scientists who put their money where their mouth is (even if that’s a conflict of interest) > When Dr. Adamala showed SpudCell to Dr. Endy… (a synthetic biologist at Stanford University) … last year, he was so awestruck that he decided to help her found Biotic, the nonprofit organization intended to create a community of SpudCell researchers. “I’m pouring my life’s work into this,” Dr. Endy said.
      - Retric 3mo ago
        > 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.
        thaumasiotes 3mo ago
        > 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.
        Retric 3mo ago
- im3w1l 3mo ago
  If you have something so truly revolutionary that everyone can see with their own two eyes how awesome it is you don't have to rely on a middleman to bless it. "Ok your loss"
  - Lerc 3mo ago
    Nobody knows how another person will see something with their eyes. What appears to be obvious and revolutionary to one person may not be so to all. Review is precisely to protect against the importance and accuracy of a work being decided by the person who is most invested in it being so.
    - stale2002 3mo ago
      Seeing as we are talking about it now, it seems like they were right that it is interesting to the public. I am not sure why you think social media attention needs to be gate kept.
    - wyldberry 3mo ago
      Whenever i sit down to read research, I remind myself of Lockheed Martin reading the USSR published research[0] on how electromagnetic waves scatter off of surfaces, and using that to fuel the initial stealth technology. The leading theory being that the USSR didn't recognize how brilliant and revolutionary ability these calculations were. Just because I can't see the immediate brilliance, doesn't mean it is not brilliant in it's own right. [0] - https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-soviet-union-accidentally-helped-america-build-f-117-nighthawk-hk-121425 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-soviet-union-acci...
      - geoduck14 3mo ago
        There is a similar story with the discovery of buckey-balls. A researcher at University of Houston had data that demonstrated buckey-balls were created, but he didn't fully understand what he was looking at. Then a researcher at Rice saw the data and recognized c-60 was being created, so he bought the data and the process and then "invented" carbon balls
- stale2002 3mo ago
  Journalists are meant to report on the news. This sounds like an interesting piece of science/news to me.
- iJohnDoe 3mo ago
  > Sending it to journalists beforehand is what I consider an overreaction. No knowledge on this particular situation. My guess is that they wanted to protect their work by getting it out there. This prevents someone from stealing it during the peer review process.

retr0rocket 3mo ago

[dead]

noosphr 3mo ago

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 only people who think peer review still works are people who have never used it or people who have never had a novel idea in their lives.

hallway_monitor 3mo ago
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.
- noosphr 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - throwaway894345 3mo ago
    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.
  - azan_ 3mo ago
    > 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.
  - cannonpr 3mo ago
    We must live in different worlds, I’ve been literally blown away by the advances I’ve seen and the new research coming out in the past 40 years. In some ways it feels like we are just getting started, especially in bio. We finally have the tools to discover the wonderful nano machines that make up life and people are using them in wonderful ways.