Surprises at new frontier trump a tool’s potential power

Lists invite disagreements, as I’ve said before (see last year’s Top 25 science stories, for example). And Science News molecular biology writer Tina Hesman Saey was not alone in arguing that the new gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 should snag the top spot this year over Pluto. Readers taking part in a poll ranking our top five picks for science story of the year also weighed in for CRISPR (see this issue’s reader feedback).