Members of the medical and academic communities criticized Penn in response to the university’s post. Eric Feigl-Ding, chief of Covid Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institute and former Harvard Medical School researcher, urged Penn to apologize to Karikó but praised her for persisting in her research despite being demoted. Nicole Paulk, founder of Siren Biotechnology, criticized Penn Medicine for its post congratulating Karikó, stating: “You shunned her and put roadblocks in the way of her and her research when she was at Penn. You should feel immense shame, not pride, today. You played no role in this.” Some critics suggested Karikó’s experience is an example of the struggles women in academia face. “A woman winning the Nobel prize for the same work Penn called ‘not faculty quality’ & Penn CLAIMING CREDIT is exactly how misogyny in academia works,” Stevenson University assistant professor Kerry Pray posted. Other critics accused Penn and other research institutions of valuing profit over quality research. Martin Bauer, associate professor of physics at Durham University, criticized Penn for its “self-adulation over a Nobel prize but no recognition of the way they treated the ‘historic research team’ when it didn’t seem profitable enough.”