🚨UPDATE: We will launch our action center on this issue tomorrow. 📣JOIN US: Emergency Science Meeting (Virtual) June 2nd at 4pm et. Details to come. Our Policy Team has read through the entire 400 page hot mess express from Russ Vought...here are the high level details. A Thread🧵 1/x

TL;DR: We've identified more than 100 cases of apparent manipulation in Thermo Fisher Scientific's antibody verification data. @sholtodavid.bsky.social @johanduchene.bsky.social reeserichardson.blog/2026/05/28/h...

So... I got more information about this plan. The most important points follow on the next posts. 1/3

Headed to the #WeinsteinCVD2026 this week? Our #DevBio and #regeneration editors @ebardot.bsky.social and @keatonschuster.bsky.social will be there! Find them to learn more about publishing with Nature Communications.

Excited to be able to go to the #WeinsteinCVD2026 meeting this week! I attended this meeting during my PhD and loved the community. DM me if you want to discuss a potential submission or just say hi. I’ll make time Wednesday for 1:1s. Looking forward to seeing what’s new in heart development🫀

Screaming to the abyss: #ColossalBio did not resurrect the dire wolf and they're probably just going to make an antelope with methemoglobinemia to give it a bluish color. Their #DeExtinction #DisInformation campaign is just a pyramid scheme because #ExtinctionIsForever 🧪

The SciAm Union is disappointed that @springernature.com dragged our colleagues into a last minute meeting this morning with the notorious union-busting law firm Littler Mendelson (the same one Starbucks and Amazon hire 👀)

Congratulations to Nick Newkirk, an amazing graduate student from the lab, on the latest story that supports a model in which helicase-domain methylation and Dicer phosphorylation act together to regulate Dicer conformation and effector recruitment. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In August, Jay Bhattacharya said “Training future biomedical scientists” was the 1st priority for his version of NIH. But talk is cheap. Let’s see how JB’s doing. 🤔 NIH supports trainees mostly via fellowship (F), training (T), and career development (K) awards. Here are funding curves for each.🧵

This is more broadly generalizable: If you don't do the research yourself, you have no idea if AI is making stuff up. And if you do the research yourself, then AI isn't saving you much labor, if any.

My quote of the day We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over. Ambrose Bierce

One hard thing about being an editor is that because of confidentiality, we can't respond to The Discourse about our work. It's fun (and justified!) to take shots at the big bad publishing houses. But pile-ons about specific papers from those not involved are tough to watch silently.

57 of my fellow students were arrested, academically disciplined, and barred from campus 2 weeks before finals. And then the visas of some of those students were quietly revoked. And then the DEI office was killed. And then we watched our mentors’ grants evaporate over “woke”.

Shameless plug, but I’m excited to see work in model organisms submitted to @natcomms.nature.com. Model organisms, non-model organisms, stem cell models. There’s room for all of it.

Thank you for submitting your Joke "Asphalt-guided Directional Locomotion of Gallus gallus" for consideration in Advances in Jokes. We have now received comments from three reviewers with appropriate senses of humor. Considering their advice I regret to inform you that we cannot publish your Joke.

I have a conference joke - actually it’s really more of a comment?

Once again shouting into the void to say that there is no excuse for using red/green for immunofluorescence images. Obviously 4+ color imaging is difficult to present, but any reason someone gives for using red/green in 2-3 color images is trash.

Just full-on outing myself as a chaotic good professor here. I do have deadlines, but otherwise slowing down, doing things by hand, and focusing on critical thinking skills (observation, curiosity, connection) has been more fun for me and my students have had better learning outcomes.

I’m glad someone said this to his face and more of these CEOs need to hear it: If the conversation around tech seems negative now it’s because you, your products, and what they’re doing to our society fucking sucks. You stopped making optimistic technology and unleashed MechaHitler the job killer.

NIH leadership wants to strip worker's rights from the majority of scientists on its campuses. But, the NIH does not get to say whether we are a union or not. We do, and we are no strangers to having to fight for our union. Time for a short history lesson. 1/n Disclaimer: all views are my own.

This is a really cool approach to both evaluating AI scientific reviews and determining how authors think and feel about having AI tools in the loop. Props to @reviewcommons.org and @qedscience.bsky.social for making this effort! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

As an alumni of Mount Sinai, I am horrified by this reporting. Sadly, the culture of prioritizing money and prestige above all else was strong at Sinai. I’m less surprised than I would like to be. These doctors and CEO Kenneth Davis need to go. Now.

The fundamental flaw with @holdenthorp.bsky.social’s argument is thinking that organizations and people can only do one thing at a time (even though he is really close to acknowledging it!) Let’s break it down, bc I’m tired of this. 🧵 (cred: @ianlmorgan.bsky.social)

Headed to @keystonesymposia.bsky.social on Stem Cell Models in Embryology tomorrow! Looking forward to hearing what’s new at the interface of #stemcells and #DevBio and finding promising stories for @natcomms.nature.com. Want to chat? DM me or find me there!

Feel like this is a good lesson to keep generative AI far from your editorial process as a matter of policy. Ars is a great website. If it can happen there it can happen to anyone that allows these tools in

My quote of the day Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. Charles Darwin

Congrats to the 2026 SDB Award Winners! Conklin Medal: Lee Niswander SDB Lifetime Achievement Award: Alexandra Joyner Hamburger Outstanding Educator Prize: Roberto Mayor Hay New Investigator Award: Jeffrey Farrell SDB Trainee SciComm Award: Nicholas Desnoyer bit.ly/4afnjiC

The City’s Budget is our future. And you deserve to know how it works.

WE WON: Today, workers at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) voted to form a union, with 81% in favor! ✊ At over 460 eligible employees, this will be the largest environmental nonprofit union in the US. newsguild.org/workers-at-e...

Half the battle with this guy is just reiterating government can and already does good things that are so ubiquitous they’ve become invisible. He’s able to remind you in a way that you understand that good government can exist outside of a 24/7 vengeance operation, and in NYC already does.

Some thoughts and questions about the Human+AI review pilot published by NEJM AI. There will be lots of efforts to integrate AI into #SciencePublishing and this is my current baseline. ai.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

When you submit your manuscript, do you want 2/3 of the reviews you get to be AI-generated? Call me old fashioned, but I'd like to keep the "peer" in peer-review. Accelerating Science with Human+AI Review | NEJM AI ai.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

👀 “If you are a 75-year-old professor reading this, now would be a good time to take emeritus status. It’s something that a lot of people could do that would contribute enormously. The job market for young people would be in much better shape if most people over 75 retired.”

What I always hear: “We can’t afford to pay our workers more than $15 an hour.” What I never hear: “We can’t afford to pay our CEO millions of dollars a year.” Funny how that works.

We probably shouldn’t have favourites amongst projects in the lab, but this one was mine. I’m so pleased we can finally share it: Our work is now out in Nature Communications: 🔗 nature.com/articles/s41467-025-67692-7

Everything is getting stupider

Come join our team! Feel free to DM me with any questions.

A close-up piece on the legacy of Sir John Gurdon - so happy to see this out at @natcomms.nature.com. Excellent editorial and community work by @ebardot.bsky.social & thank you, @evahoermanseder.bsky.social et al.! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We are honored to share our Perspective in Nature Communications, reflecting on the legacy of John B. Gurdon. Beyond his discoveries, his generosity and curiosity inspired a community of scientists-we remember and celebrate his lasting impact. #JohnGurdon #Xenopus #NatureCommunications

We have just published a tribute to John Gurdon, reflecting on his scientific legacy and the profound influence he had on generations of developmental biologists. The piece is available open access in Nature Communications: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

My quote of the day How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg. Abraham Lincoln

I am absolutely delighted to share the invited speakers for our upcoming @bsdb.bsky.social "Molecules to Morphogenesis" meeting! Registration and abstract submission is now open - join us! bsdb.org/meetings/ March 23-26, 2026 - UK

Amazing day at #GastrulationReloaded with thought provoking science and jaw dropping methods. Also, for no reason at all, re-posting this open Collection: www.nature.com/collections/... Don’t sweat the deadline, we’ll extend it and I’ll add relevant papers that come to me @natcomms.nature.com

Lots of great discussion about developmental variability here at #GastrulationReloaded! Super important to consider, and current tools have the power for this. Related to this recent paper showing that mild phenotypes are more variable than severe ones. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Statement from Post Guild Leadership: The Washington Post Guild condemns the unjust firing of columnist Karen Attiah

Very excited to be headed to Paris next month for the #GastrulationReloaded meeting! An awesome lineup of speakers on my favorite #DevBio topic (don't tell the rest of my @natcomms.nature.com remit). www.gastrulation-reloaded.conferences-pasteur.org/home

Registration is now open! Gastrulation Reloaded: Developing, engineering & evolving the body plan 📅 October 14–17, 2025 📍 Paris, France 🗓️ Abstract & early bird deadline: July 15, 2025 www.gastrulation-reloaded.conferences-pasteur.org/home Exceptional lineup of speakers & many selected talks

Thrilled - and so honored - to be among the most recent additions to this incredible group of scientists!

Extremely honored to receive this prize from @socdevbio.bsky.social, which recognizes not only my love for developmental biology, but the extremely online I am 🧪 (protect science, protect people, viva la dev bio!)