<story><title>France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes</title><url>https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/france-issues-moratorium-prion-research-after-fatal-brain-disease-strikes-two-lab</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dekhn</author><text>Prions are weird.  I was at UCSF during the time they went from a fringe theory to an established fact and a nobel prize.  The professor who studied them (Prusiner) had to overcome tons of resistance and the experiments were heroic (often waiting months for mice to die).  It&amp;#x27;s really funny that everybody resisted it until somebody mentioned that there was a plausible physical mechanism of refolding catalysis.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>andrewflnr</author><text>&amp;gt; everybody resisted it until somebody mentioned that there was a plausible physical mechanism&lt;p&gt;This is a good instinct IMO. Experiments by one person can easily be nonsense, especially if you don&amp;#x27;t already know and trust that person. Without a physical mechanism, given extraordinary results, I would certainly remain skeptical.</text></comment>
<story><title>France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes</title><url>https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/france-issues-moratorium-prion-research-after-fatal-brain-disease-strikes-two-lab</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dekhn</author><text>Prions are weird.  I was at UCSF during the time they went from a fringe theory to an established fact and a nobel prize.  The professor who studied them (Prusiner) had to overcome tons of resistance and the experiments were heroic (often waiting months for mice to die).  It&amp;#x27;s really funny that everybody resisted it until somebody mentioned that there was a plausible physical mechanism of refolding catalysis.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>varispeed</author><text>Is it because many researchers put their ego first over the science?
It&amp;#x27;s so many times that they ridicule ideas, that often amounts to bullying and then they rarely even say sorry when it turns out they were wrong.
Why won&amp;#x27;t academia flush out these types of people?
The toxic atmosphere with no way of getting rid of bad apples is what put me off from studying.</text></comment>