TS Picks: November 9, 2015

FLICKR, MICHAEL KNOWLES

Selections from The Scientist’s reading list:

• “CRISPR technology offers a new outlet for the inchoate fear of tinkering with the fundamentals of life.” —The New Yorker on the gene-editing technology in its November 16 issue
  
• With its feature PaperRank, Academia.edu is harnessing user recommendations to rate papers discussed on the social-networking website, TechCrunch reported last week (November 4). “What I’m trying to do is take the flat distribution right now of two peer reviews per paper and augment it and collect more sentiment,” Academia.edu founder Richard Price told TechCrunch. “And the way we’re getting it is by asking people who read the paper just what they thought.”
  
• Waseda University has revoked the PhD that biologist Haruko Obokata earned there in 2011, The Japan Times reported last week (November 2). “The university found that the thesis lacked scientific basis and logic,” according to The...