Talk:Katalin Karikó

Tone

The article either downplays or obscures the rejection of her initial research by the academic community and merely mentions in just a few words that she had trouble finding grants. There’s a lot more to say about her travails as she worked against the tide of the status quo, as seen in the 2021 NYT piece and in comments by others, such as Jonathan Howard at NYU. More should be said about her struggle and adversity to bring this research into reality. Viriditas (talk) 08:12, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Totally agree -- omitting this part of her story is a decision to sanitize the story of institutional obstacles in her path. 64.30.65.45 (talk) 02:12, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: A new source was published yesterday:

Binday, Ben (October 26, 2023). "'Not of faculty quality': How Penn mistreated Nobel Prize-winning researcher Katalin Karikó". The Daily Pennsylvanian. Retrieved October 27, 2023. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Viriditas (talk • contribs) 23:25, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

This is on my watchlist. You and I talked about this in user talk, and I'll take a serious look at it eventually. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:05, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Not enough credit

This page doesn't give Kariko enough credit. It reads as if she is merely the co-worker of Weissman. But she is the one how pushed this topic hard over many years before Weissman would help her with his resources. This effort deserves more highlighting. Suspekt (talk) 11:13, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Frankly, this whole article needs a lot of work. His, actually, is even more barren, if you can believe it. A lot of editing and addition is needed, and the article is badly unclear as of now.

I would also love to see a lot more details on the division of labor that earned her and Weissman the Nobel Prize. What were each one's contributions?

Also, slightly off-topic, holy cow, imagine having a Nobel Prize-winner and a two-time gold medalist in the same family! Imagine winning TWO gold medals and STILL not being the most accomplished person in your family! Red Slash 18:18, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Citizenship

We list her in the infobox as Hungarian and American, but I see nothing in the body of the article supporting the American, and have been unable to find a source saying that she became an American citizen. If there isn't such a source, "American" needs to be removed from the infobox. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:18, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Associated Press: https://apnews.com/article/nobel-prize-medicine-71306bd18785477f3a85a69caa6e09c9 "Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman were cited for contributing “to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health,” according to the panel that awarded the prize in Stockholm." --GRuban (talk) 22:24, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Also https://www.leopoldina.org/fileadmin/redaktion/Mitglieder/CV_Karik%C3%B3_Katalin_EN.pdf --GRuban (talk) 22:25, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Attempt to deport Karikó from the US, made by her advisor at Temple University: Prof Robert Suhadolnik

There has been a lot of information in the news about the attempt by her advisor, Robert Sudhadolnik, attempting to have Karikó deported after "his protégé" accepted an offer to work in another research lab at Johns Hopkins University. Then, JHU rescinded her job offer so as not to get tied up in a legal case or deportation proceedings. ... and it was apparently quite iffy if she would be allowed to contnue to work as a researcher in the US in this field. This seems like it should be included in this encyclopedic article on Karikó.

Let's add sources and descriptions here, and we can write a good paragraph to add once we have several reliable secondary sources on the matter. — N2e (talk) 17:23, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Much better sources have been found, and are now explicated in another article. The article Robert J. Suhadolnik was recently created by another editor. That article has a very complete section stub in it describing the attempt by Suhadolnik to get Karikó deported from the USA after she accepted the job offer from Johns Hopkins University in 1988. This was, apparently, in about her third year in the US, during the years after her PhD, when she was working in her advisor's lab at Temple University. You can read it, and see the good sourcing, here: Robert_J._Suhadolnik#Katalin_Karikó, or if that is changed, here is the latest version of it today: Suhadolnik article as of 2023-10-06T12:17:11. Cheers. — N2e (talk) 19:49, 6 October 2023 (UTC)

There is NO good sourcing besides second-hand reporting by Zuckerman (which I did not yet read). Here are the reasons to be skeptical. Kariko got an IAP-66 and came for her postdoc position on a J-1 visa. These visas were for three years and the recipients of J-1 from countries like Hungary or Poland HAD to return to their country of origin after the third year in the U.S. So, under normal circumstances Kariko had to leave (or be deported by the authorities) without any intervention on the Suhadolnik part. At that time Kariko was certainly not in a position to get a so-called waiver (Einstein provision). It would therefore be interesting to know how was she able to solve her visa problem. Some young researchers from so-called socialist countries were solving the problem by asking for the political asylum in the U.S. On a closer look the story of Kariko staying in America will probably prove much more complicated than the one reported. Math45-oxford (talk) 15:36, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

 Done — have updated the article prose with the sources and much of the prose originally written by DragonflySixtyseven in the new Robert J. Suhadolnik article. N2e (talk) 23:41, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Wording on vaccine contribution

The messenger RNA-based technology developed by Karikó and the two most effective vaccines based on it, BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna, have formed the basis for the effective and successful fight against SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide...

Coupla things:

• The repetition of "effective" is not ideal
• "...formed the basis..." — the mRNA vaccines were very important, but there were other interventions as well (and for that matter other vaccines)
• "successful" — I think that depends on your success criteria. I suppose complete success would be eradication of the virus, and that obviously has not happened (not that anyone thought it would). Probably another word would be better.

I started trying to edit it, but the correct fix isn't completely obvious, so I set down these thoughts to let it percolate. --Trovatore (talk) 20:04, 3 October 2023 (UTC)