After shunning scientist, University of Pennsylvania celebrates her Nobel Prize — School that once demoted Katalin Karikó and cut her pay has made millions of dollars from patenting her work

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 444 points –
After Shunning Scientist, University of Pennsylvania Celebrates Her Nobel Prize
wsj.com

After shunning scientist, University of Pennsylvania celebrates her Nobel Prize — School that once demoted Katalin Karikó and cut her pay has made millions of dollars from patenting her work::School that once demoted Katalin Karikó and cut her pay has made millions of dollars from patenting her work

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The fun, fair world of academia.

Where both students and teachers are somehow exploited by business majors.

Let's not forget the medical world ignored and sidelined her research for years until suddenly it became necessary. If it weren't for COVID they'd still be pretending this technology doesn't exist. I bet they still don't even want it (case in point: it was developed with the intent of treating HIV and there's still no HIV treatment in sight) but the CEOs and shit have had to accept it.

Good that she had the determination to continue. The great thing is that she was vindicated because it turned out she was right. In science being right is what ultimately matters.

I'm guessing she will never have similar problems in the future.

The thing is she randomly got lucky and proven right due to a pandemic that no-one expected. There are a huge number of other scientists out there who were also right but never had that luck.

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The problem is, and this happens a lot in science, often it takes so long for scientists to be vindicated they die poor and in disrepute. If the pandemic had never happened she may have gone the same way.

She may not, but i wonder how many other incredible technologies are being held back for effectively political reasons.

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IANAL, but seems like this lady should sue them.

If she did the work there they likely own it.

she left after they gave her an ultimatum of having to take a pay cut if she wanted to continue. i am not sure if she is a founder but she worked at BioNTech , so it's not owned by the university. I don't think it's illegal but this is the time she should be publicizing the story to shame them and divert talent to competing universities.

Don't get me wrong U of P is a good school but it is also where trump got his "degree" which I am sure he did 100% of the work to obtain it.