[butner]

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?

[ackbar03]

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.

[mortigi]

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.

[rob74]

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...).

[jgrahamc]

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.

[ch4s3]

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

[sfifs]

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