Top all-time · #6288
Paul Knoepfler
Personal blog · ipscell.comsciencehealth
Paul Knoepfler writes The Niche, a personal blog at ipscell.com about science and health. Since 2014, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Paul Knoepfler's stem cell blog covers CRISPR patent disputes, the gene-editing embryo summit, stem-cell therapy research and retractions. Commenters cite its posts as sources for their own points.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The Niche | Stem Cell Blog-Resources | Paul Knoepfler UC Davis
Most-linked posts?
- /2016/01/patent-expert-weighs-in-on-crispr-dispute-between-uc-broad/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-01-19
What Hacker News says?
Lander wrote an article in "Cell" about the history as he saw it of the invention of the Crispr technique. It covered the bases but was flawed, but it did include a lot of scientists that weren't included before. The article basically tries to discredit it. It wasn't a great argument and frankly the authors not a impartial (Friends with one of the scientist, and works at one of the universities) I'm surprised it mad…
Comment linking /2016/01/patent-expert-weighs-in-on-crispr-dispute-between-uc-broad/
on “The Villain of CRISPR”Submitted Perspectives on new stem cells for vision loss paper as a story · 51 points
HN discussion1) https://www.ipscell.com/2012/04/the-real-but-oft-ignored-dan... 2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070641/ The abstract from 2) : "Stem cell therapy holds the promise to treat degenerative diseases, cancer and repair of damaged tissues for which there are currently no or limited therapeutic options. The potential of stem cell therapies has long been recognised and the creation of induced pluripotent…
Comment linking /2012/04/the-real-but-oft-ignored-dangers-of-adult-stem-cell-treatments/
on “Stem Cells Regenerate Human Lens After Cataract Surgery, Restoring Vision”Submitted Paper on first use of CRISPR in normal human embryos as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe authors have uploaded a copy of the paper which can be accessed here: http://hsci.harvard.edu/files/hsci/files/pagliuca_et_al_cell... (I'd actually recommend giving the paper a skim even if you're not trained in biology. The Introduction and Discussion should still be very comprehensible, and while the Results do suffer from the alphabet soup problem (as do most biological papers), the overall structure of the e…
Comment linking /2014/10/top-10-takeaways-from-harvard-stem-cell-diabetes-paper/
on “Giant leap against Diabetes”Submitted Steven Pinker interview: case against bioethocrats and CRISPR germline ban as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSee: http://www.ipscell.com/2016/01/patent-expert-weighs-in-on-cr... and https://law.stanford.edu/2015/12/29/the-crispr-patent-interf... They're mostly specific to Cas9.
Comment linking /2016/01/patent-expert-weighs-in-on-crispr-dispute-between-uc-broad/
on ““Heroes of CRISPR” Disputed”Submitted Top List of CRISPR Predictions for New Year as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPlease, please, please submit some more original journalistic source rather than PhysOrg for stories like this. It's unclear from this incomplete PhysOrg write-up if the reference is to a considerably older original story in Nature [1] The Retraction Watch group blog, a good source for interesting stories for Hacker News, had some reporting about this story a while ago.[2] That commentary reporting links to a story…
Comment linking /tag/stap-cells/
on “Still no stem cells via easy 'STAP' path”Submitted New Nature papers debunk STAP cells as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://ipscell.com/2017/02/mosquitoes-swat-back-via-resista...
Comment linking /2017/02/mosquitoes-swat-back-via-resistance-crispr-gene-drive/
on “List of Epidemics”Submitted Nature Yanks Article That Was Advertisement on Controversial Stem Cells as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis is already done, and currently disputed patent is not as important as the article claims. Quoting from http://www.ipscell.com/2016/01/patent-expert-weighs-in-on-cr... Q. Are there elements to this patent situation that most people are overlooking? A. Probably the most important thing that people are overlooking is the scope of the claimed subject material of the Doudna patent application (and also the Zhang pat…
Comment linking /2016/01/patent-expert-weighs-in-on-crispr-dispute-between-uc-broad/
on “The billion-dollar CRISPR patent battle: A case of big money shaping science”Paul Knoepfler has written on the topic of "GMO Sapiens" and he attended the summit, http://www.ipscell.com/2015/12/perspectives-no-moratorium-fr... "Heritable human genetic modification could prevent some rare genetic diseases so there is real potential there, but it also could open the door to serious problems such as unforeseen health consequences across generations, social justice issues, and eugenics … Keep in…
Comment linking /2015/12/perspectives-no-moratorium-from-organizers-of-geneeditsummit/
on “Summit rules out ban on gene editing embryos destined to become people”The response from the scientific community about this paper has been unbelievable. PubPeer has had a really great summary (by scientists) of critiques about this original paper. [1] Paul Knoepfler, an active science blogger and professor at UC Davis that runs a lab that studies stem cells, crowdsourced data from many people who have (unsuccessfully) attempted to repeat the this experiment. [2, 3] I'm really impresse…
Comment linking /stap-new-data/
on “Stem-cell scientist found guilty of misconduct”
