> I don't mean to trivialize Mojica's work, but at the end of the day if not for the later work of Doudna and Charpentier, Mojica's work on CRISPR would be unknown and irrelevant to 99.9999% of the world population.
The point here is that if Mojica (or Šikšnys) instead of professors in a random European university, were supported by University of California, MIT, or any of the big names, they would not be in the predicament they are today.
And if Janssen had not invented the microscope... clearly all Nobel prizes in medicine and physiology should go to a Dutch guy who died 400 years ago.
Mojica made a contribution. Doudna and Charpentier made a contribution which clearly conferred greater benefit on humankind. Šikšnys made a contribution but got scooped, which sucks but that's how science goes sometimes.
It has nothing to do with university support and it's not a predicament. The prize as awarded accurately reflects the relative impact of each step forward.
> I work in science. It hasn’t been always like this and it is getting worse. Nobody does basic or risky research anymore.
Getting scooped has always been a risk. Crick and Watson fretted about it when they were working on the structure of DNA. Newton and Leibniz bickered over priority for calculus hundreds of years ago. My wife fretted about it when she was isolating and studying the function of a 450kDa protein for her PhD a decade ago. I don't think it has really changed that much.
And if Mojica had not discover CRISPR...
Anyways. Here's an article if you are interested:
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/nobel-crispr
The point here is that if Mojica (or Šikšnys) instead of professors in a random European university, were supported by University of California, MIT, or any of the big names, they would not be in the predicament they are today.