uBiome: Ethical Lapse or Not?

uBiome’s CEO, Jessica Richman, seems to me to be a great saleswoman who also excels at sounding innocent and playing the misunderstood victim in the ethical controversy surrounding her company. I think this was well illustrated in her recent guest blog in Scientific American with Dr. Zachary Apte, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of uBiome. The picture is a little less rosy if you look back at the origins and history of the discussions about her company’s perceived ethical lapses.

I was intending to write about uBiome before this, as I was disturbed by Richman’s appearance at TEDMED. Admittedly, I was already put off by her telling twitter handle of “@venturejessica.” Her hubris was further evidenced by the title of her TEDMED talk, “Could a citizen scientist win a Nobel Prize?” Fortunately, her talk was a bit more restrained, though still touting the potential of her as yet untested product.

Richman and Apte’s recent blog has shown that they seem to have learned little from the heated discussions about uBiome. Their business is part of the UCSF’s Quantitative Biosciences Institute...