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Claude discovers a novel enzyme system with CRISPR-like repeats

780 points · 805 comments · raahelb

evolarjun · 1790192734 · focus · HN ↗
It is odd (or maybe not) that they decided to publish a marketing whitepaper rather than a more traditional journal submission + preprint. The work does appear to be sufficient for a publication, though there's a good chance a reviewer will rip into them for some of the assertions they make, but given the topic I'm sure the paper will be accepted regardless.
The market for entry-level programmers has already declined, but at least they were somewhat in demand and made reasonable salaries. Now what happens to post-docs who already make almost nothing and often get treated like crap?
1. gavinray · 1790195247 · focus · HN ↗
  Did anyone read the blogpost? They did publish a pre-print:
  > Our work to understand the primary function of ARTs is ongoing. However, we think it is important to share such findings early, both to demonstrate Claude’s capabilities and to give the broader community insight into what we’re working on. We have released a pre-print (here) that discusses this in more detail.
  <a href="https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/22573675ada52a8ca8a97a1a4b4326b2f208a071.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/22573675ada52a8ca8a97a1a4b4326...
  1. beAbU · 1790195720 · focus · HN ↗
    What's with all this pre-print business. It became very prevalent during covid, where it felt like every week some new pre-print was published that discusses some new aspect of the virus. These papers would then be used in arguments and put forward as proof of whatever claim the arguer was making.
    Every man and his dog can publish a pre-print and in my opinion it's academically worthless.
    howunfortunate · 1790196102 · focus · HN ↗
    Journal articles are usually behind a paywall. Preprints are a fully open workaround allowed by most journals.
    > Every man and his dog can publish a pre-print and in my opinion it's academically worthless.
    Sure but if you look at the authors names and see they have 50 other published papers, you can get a rough idea that it's probably equivalently good to their other work.
    Until you've done it yourself, it's hard to grok just how bad the peer review process is. It's like...5% better than nothing.
    Honestly you could argue peer review is worse than nothing, as it also filters out actually quality work that violates some dogma of the field.

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