4 ms·

Why is this getting so many upvotes? Pretty unspectacular stuff.

• gus_massa 3y ago
  Do you have a link to some similar method published before? For me, it looks interesting. But this is not my area, so I'm not sure if it's groundbreaking or just usual stuff with some irrelevant spin.
  • car 3y ago
    Well, what struck me was the upvotes to comment ratio, which hovered at n:0 for the longest time. There is a similar posting just now (20:21 PST), also from medicalexpress.com. At this moment 71 points and 3 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37203761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37203761 Seems fishy.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • gus_massa 3y ago
      My guess is that people love to upvote cancer cure, perhaps too much. IIUC this is only a proof of concept, not a clinical trial, not even rats, so it's too early to know if it will be useful. I think it will be very specific because it can target an specific RNA, but I don't know if it can be adapted to test multiple markers instead of just one. Also, I don't buy the single molecule story. My guess is that have many (10^20) molecules in the solution but only one of them binds to the probe. For an oficial reply, you can email the mods, so they can take a look. Sometimes technical stories have a high upvote to comment ratio. It used to be common but now it's more unusual.