Two ongoing disputes brought The Scientist to the courtroom to listen in on the proceedings this year. The first is a defamation suit that former Wayne State University researcher Fazlul Sarkar brought against anonymous commenters on the post-publication peer review website PubPeer. Sarkar asked the court to reveal the identities of the individuals who had accused him of image manipulation, a claim he disputes but which allegedly cost him a job. The second is a heated patent battle over the intellectual property rights for CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology, which holds great medical and industrial promise.
Meanwhile, the controversial assisted reproductive technique known as mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT), which creates an embryo using DNA from three individuals, made great strides, resulting in the first successful births and an international a debate around the procedure, which is banned in the U.S.
BOB GRANTAs 2016 dawned, former Wayne State University pathologist Fazlul Sarkar vowed to continue his legal fight against anonymous commenters on post-publication peer review website PubPeer as tech industry and scientific bigwigs weighed in on the case. In January, former National Cancer Institute Director Harold Varmus, former Science Editor in Chief Bruce Alberts, and tech titans Google and Twitter filed amicus briefs supporting PubPeer and the anonymity of commenters after a Michigan judge ordered the identities of one of those commenters revealed to Sarkar’s legal team and PubPeer appealed the decision.
