Eric Lander: Burned to a CRISPR

Who is Eric Lander you are asking?  He served as the Science Officer for the Biden Administration.  He lasted eight months.  He resigned after accusations of bullying and sexism forced the White House to say "ummm, hey, wait a minute, this is supposed to be a stupid-easy cabinet post, why are we hearing so much about you."  Eric Lander had the chance to be a real life Dr. Spock, the first Chief Science Officer on Planet Earth.  Instead he made his staff feel undervalued and apparently this was a super common occurrence when those people happened to be women.

It's not like this came without warning.  Eric had to make some public apologies before he was appointed.  He explained during his Congressional Appointment hearing that sometimes he behaved in ways he wasn't proud of and in the same hearing then also apologized for understating the contributions of two female scientist who helped with the discovery of CRISPR technology.

Eric happens to have been the President and Founding Member of the Broad Institute (if you are smart you've heard of it and if not...well you've heard of it now so welcome to the smart club).  The Broad Institute happens to be in a patent war with UC Berkley over the discovery of CRISPR and the legal dispute also happens to involve the two scientists whose contributions to the CRISPR field Eric had understated in a published paper (coincidentally, these two Nobel Prize winning scientists also happen to have vaginas).  

What is CRISPR you ask?  Well, it's like the internet was in the 1990s: it's this weird thing that people are talking about now that sounds really sci fi and in no way impacts you, and five years from now you will be guzzling some gene enhancing solution to change your eye color to match your shirt.  That is a promise.