Thread

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.
    ACCount39 · 1790198631 · focus · HN ↗
    Preprints are just a way to sacrifice rigor for accessibility and velocity. You can throw out "here, this is what I'm working on, here are the quick and dirty findings" really fast and with little friction.
    This does skip the academic "checks and balances" like journal selection and peer review - but it can also help anyone else who's working on the adjacent topics.
    If a field is moving fast, and you think there can be some value in your work for others in the near term? Preprint. If your work is too incomplete or too minor to warrant trying to polish and publish it, but you don't want to table it? Preprint. Too deep in corporate structures to care about academic "street cred", and want your work to be accessible? Preprint. Have an exciting early finding that you want to push out there, and are willing to take the rep risks of being wrong about it? Preprint.
    There's a reason why preprints came to be the lifeblood of ML.
    VBprogrammer · 1790199591 · focus · HN ↗
    Academia isn't my thing but I also wonder if there isn't an aspect of putting a stake in the ground? So that if someone beats you to publishing you at least have some record of being on that track.
    gmueckl · 1790201421 · focus · HN ↗
    That is definitely a big motivator for publishing preprints. Journal submissions can take up to a year. Comference submissions take months. If the field is moving fast, claiming a finding early can become an important career move.
    In older days, academics would just share notes on their work and word wouldn't usually spread widely before publication.
    Preprints may be the better model. But public visibility means that non-experts now get to see the good and the bad research equally, but they won't have the domain knowledge and skill to distinguish one from the other with confidence.

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