4 ms·

The last author Svante Pääbo's group has been working on Neanderthal genome sequencing for roughly two decades now. It's basic research into the evolutionary hi

by svara 6y ago

The last author Svante Pääbo's group has been working on Neanderthal genome sequencing for roughly two decades now. It's basic research into the evolutionary history of our species. They certainly didn't secretly want to work on infectious diseases all along. Besides, where do you get the idea that getting funded to work on the Neanderthal genome is easier than getting funded to work on an ongoing pandemic? Not that Pääbo needs it, as a Max Planck director he doesn't need to apply for grants. What's happening here is simply that the world's Neanderthal genome experts continue working on Neanderthal genomes, and when they find something that is related to the pandemic it ends up in Nature and the popular press.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Besides, where do you get the idea that getting funded to work on the Neanderthal genome is easier than getting funded to work on an ongoing pandemic? I stated as clearly as I know how that it is my general understanding, not specific to this article or what is being studied here. I get the idea from my sister who worked at the CDC for many years and also had multiple rounds of cancer. And before life got in the way and she and I stopped being able to hang on the phone regularly, she used to routinely read the latest cancer research because she worked at the CDC and because she had cancer. And she used to routinely bitch to me about how "98 percent of it is some variation on the same thing because it's what is trendy and it's what you can readily get funding for. There's almost nothing actually new and interesting in breast cancer research." She was also patient zero in a cutting edge study and yadda. She was very much an insider in multiple ways and she and I were close at one time, before I was homeless and had no phone for a year or more and before she began working 16 hours a day and had no time talk to anyone regularly, not even our mother.

by svara 6y ago

DoreenMichele 6y ago

Besides, where do you get the idea that getting funded to work on the Neanderthal genome is easier than getting funded to work on an ongoing pandemic? I stated as clearly as I know how that it is my general understanding, not specific to this article or what is being studied here. I get the idea from my sister who worked at the CDC for many years and also had multiple rounds of cancer. And before life got in the way and she and I stopped being able to hang on the phone regularly, she used to routinely read the latest cancer research because she worked at the CDC and because she had cancer. And she used to routinely bitch to me about how "98 percent of it is some variation on the same thing because it's what is trendy and it's what you can readily get funding for. There's almost nothing actually new and interesting in breast cancer research." She was also patient zero in a cutting edge study and yadda. She was very much an insider in multiple ways and she and I were close at one time, before I was homeless and had no phone for a year or more and before she began working 16 hours a day and had no time talk to anyone regularly, not even our mother.