This refers to “India cracks human genome, joins elite club” (December 22). I wonder if we can really compare the recent work of Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) on sequencing the genome of a 52-year-old man from Jharkhand with Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan, as reported.
The report by KS Jayaraman (Press Trust of India) is balanced. He took pains to get in touch with many scientists and seek their views. He spoke to leading biologists such as G Padmanabhan, Pushpa Bhargava and D Balasubramanian, and some professors at the Indian Institute of Science. The very first sentence mentions that genome mapping by IGIB scientists “is a step forward”, but he questions the hype. The reports in Business Standard and many other Indian newspapers give the impression that the work is of the highest class.
It is time our newspapers learned to distinguish real good science from a repetition of what has already been done elsewhere. Besides, the work being reported has not been subjected to peer review or published in a professional journal.
Subbiah Arunachalam, Chennai