Last spring, the breakdown of negotiations between Celera Genomics and the Human Genome Project was front page news. I think the public face of this, the journalistic feeding frenzy, has served no one terribly well and I am just not impressed by it. If you look at things from a 20-year perspective, this is about as exciting as the New Hampshire primaries. In the grand scheme of things people aren't going to care an awful lot who did what three months earlier than anybody else. As scientists we should look past all this, but that's hard with the media recognizing that this is a cheap and easy way for science writers to get their story on the front page.
People are very susceptible to that.
Apparently, Celera and the Human Genome Project are still negotiating a joint publication of the genome data. Oh, I talk to everybody in the community. This is a public service project and I think it would serve the world well for everyone to be talking. Progress is made much more quickly. That has always been the case in science.