I'm collecting together my prior Bluesky threads addressing popular misconceptions about genetics. A thread of threads, beginning with this brief guide to heritability: 🧬🧵🧪

For more than a decade, Stephen Colbert has been one of the top voices of late night—making us laugh and, even more importantly, reminding us who we are and what America stands for. Michelle and I enjoyed being Stephen’s guests—even when the games were rigged—and we’re grateful to call him a friend.

Generation Scotland: Scottish Family Health Study now has reading and language phenotypes to use alongside its other rich data including omics: bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/4/2/... @genscot.bsky.social Our protocol paper led by @hayleymountford.bsky.social

Very excited about this preprint that we just posted. It introduces the Genomic-Relatedness Matched Association (GRMA) study. It’s an extension to family-based GWAS that uses extended relatives beyond only siblings in diverse-ancestry data with very little bias. (Link below.)

MIT has lost 500 international grad students relative to last year. Caused directly by the White House. Closing America's doors to the very best, most brilliant people on the planet is like dropping a bomb directly on America's capacity to innovate. On the prosperity of our children's future.

Stuttering is one of the most recognizable—and stigmatized—communication disorders. In recognition of National Stuttering Awareness Week, we’re highlighting resources that you can use in your work. https://academy.pubs.asha.org/2026/05/national-stuttering-awareness-week-new-and-trending-resources/

A report from Speech & Language UK highlights the action needed to ensure the specific needs of children with DLD are not overlooked in the proposed reforms to the SEND system. You can read Speech and Language UK’s report here speechandlanguage.org.uk/wp-content/u...

For any early career researchers working on wellbeing, this mentoring programme (European mentors) might be of interest: site.unibo.it/una-europa/e...

Exam prep for a research and statistics exam in 2026! sachaepskamp.com/PL2132_games...

After 150 years of boring wooden Galton boards, I finally fixed it! Now with lasers, bazookas, bombs, pinball bumpers, and extremely serious sci-fi hamsters. 🎯 EXTREME GALTON 👇 sachaepskamp.com/extreme_galton

It feels like yesterday that online-engineers-of-a-certain-age were saying that heavy freight could never be electrified. To quote William Gibson, "The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet." Fossil fuel interests want to keep it that way.

Behold the rosy veincap! This species, which is considered inedible, is the only fungus in its taxon. It has a wide range & can be spotted worldwide, including in parts of N. America, Africa, Europe, & Asia. Have you ever seen one? Photo: Dan Molter, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

Mental image of Boaty McBoatface putting on hat, fake mustache, and sunglasses as he approaches Strait of Hormuz www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/w...

🚨New Paper in PNAS: "Refugee Labor Market Integration at Scale: Evidence from Germany’s Fast-Track Employment Program" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Ungated preprint osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/px9ew_v3 w/ J Hainmueller, D Hangartner, @niklas-harder.bsky.social & E Vallizadeh #econtwitter #econsky

I've been coming across so many great open science initiatives in other fields that I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the efforts happening in the Education Sciences. New blog post! 💡 cghlewis.com/blog/ed_open...

Today we launch The Australian DNA Bridge, a study focused on individuals with mixed ancestries to help us make genetic discoveries that are more accurate, inclusive, and equitable across all populations. Want to learn more? Follow the link. [https://australiandnabridgestudy.org/]

You were (very likely) born because your parents mated 😅 Title and sub-heading aside, great piece by @kristenfrench.bsky.social on the genetics of individual differences in sensitivity to music and art

‘I’ve been swept up by the autism spectrum idea, and it’s only in the past 10 years that I have felt things have gone too far. Very slowly, I have come to say, “No, this is not right”’: Autism expert professor Uta Frith talks to @helen-amass.bsky.social

📖5th #iWORDD this October: 2 days of reading & dyslexia research, 1 on real-world impact! Join our outstanding keynote line-up + share your work here by April 15: shorturl.at/lSlBI @jyeatman.bsky.social @gaablab.bsky.social @drmluciano.bsky.social @standehaene.bsky.social @cassandrapw.bsky.social

GWAS Catalog API v1 retires in May 2026 🧬 Migrating to v2? It's faster, more stable, and gives you better query control. Docs 👉 www.ebi.ac.uk/gwas/rest/api/v2/docs Ref 👉 www.ebi.ac.uk/gwas/rest/api/v2/docs/reference 3 months to go #genomics

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

Mendelian Randomization is powerful but often debated. We benchmarked it against the "ground truth" of human metabolic pathways to see how often it gets it right. 🧬 Result: MR is robust! It matches known metabolism in 43% of cases and identifies valid drug targets. www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltex...

@clydefrancks.bsky.social found what is potentially (likey?!) the first fully hallucinated GWAS paper, of “left handedness”… the Manhattan plot has the wrong number of chromosomes, and genes labels with one wrong chromosome placed in a second wrong chromosome… wild…

Dyslexia isn’t just about reading and writing. Prof Maggie Snowling explains how reading disorders originate in the language system, and why many children also struggle with oral language. Read the full blog to learn more. https://bit.ly/4qr5SlY

The department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Ghent University is proud to present a lecture series on the topic of eugenics. As philosophers and ethicists, we are concerned about the revival and normalization of eugenic discourse. humanitiesacademie.ugent.be/eugenics

🚀The UK’s longitudinal research sector is about to get a major upgrade in training. CLOSER, supported by Population Research UK, is creating a strategic, UK-wide training resource for LPS. Find out what’s coming: shorturl.at/guRbh

Same DNA, different cells, different stories 🧬 Some genetic changes arise during life, creating genetic ‘mosaics’ in the body. Here, we explain what somatic mutations are and how we are exploring them. https://sangerinstitute.blog/2026/01/15/what-are-somatic-mutations/

Remember the famous UKB migration paper? We found that internal migration also shapes population structure in Estonia. Key patterns replicate within families. www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Thanks for sharing - we're looking forward to it!

Clever use of proteomic data to stress-test TWAS and QTL colocalization methods, revealing a high false sign rate. This hypothesis about high-LD and cross-tissue confounding is particularly interesting:

This looks really cool, but where are the brain-related phenotypes @nbaya.bsky.social? N.B. I haven't read the paper, only the abstract and this glorious figure :)

International Workshop on Reading and Developmental Dyslexia is in San Sebastián, 7-9th October 2026, www.bcbl.eu/events/iword... Scientific and Practical Days, see you there!

Stephen Fry launches campaign to boost reading for pleasure

Some of us from the UK's Specific Learning Difficulties Network @sldnetwork.bsky.social have shared our views on the new Delphi definition of dyslexia onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/..., special thanks to Kinga Morsanyi @kmorsanyi.bsky.social for pulling it together so nicely!

This is great - a clear overview of key principles in data visualisation, written in a super-accessible and interest way, with great examples throughout.

Want to echo Abdel and encourage reading this excellent commentary he put together!

How did DNA changes that alter protein structures impact evolution on the branch that led to modern humans? As we demonstrate today in Science Advances, biobanking initiatives offer ways to directly assess biological effects of rare archaic variants in living people, & (re)evaluate their roles. 🧬🧪

Photographer Martin Parr just passed. If you don't know his work, the Guardian has a really nice introduction here. h/t @wvschaik.bsky.social

Nominations for the UKRN Dorothy Bishop Prize 2026 have opened! Named after @deevybee.bsky.social, the prize, first awarded in 2022, celebrates the contributions of early career researchers to research improvement. Nominations close 18 January 2026. #AcademicSky #Research

This was a super fun project to do my small part on. @roshnipatel.bsky.social really helped me understand what we're doing when we're trying to "control for genetics" when assessing associations between interventions and outcomes, and how a lot of the standard ways to do so are simply inadequate.

Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol made $95 million last year. His workers are striking for the bare minimum. Glad to be on the right side of the picket line with them.

Consider submitting an abstract for an invited talk or poster at STATGEN 2026 by December 15th! Amazing keynote speakers and statistical leaders in #genetics and #genomics! 👏 Hope to see you there! statgen26.emory.edu 🧪 🧬 🖥️ 🧠 #statssky #imaging #SingleCell #spatial #omics #DigitalPathology

Come work with me! Feel free to contact me via email, if you have questions : )

🔍 Want to get the most out of the Atlas of Longitudinal Datasets? We offer free online webinars with a tailored introduction and live demo to help you navigate the platform and make the most of its features. 📩 Interested? Email us to schedule a session: [email protected]

Advances in genomics are giving exciting new perspectives on biology of speech, language & reading. My latest peer-reviewed paper is a tutorial, guiding readers from different backgrounds through the history of the field, current state-of-the-art, & where we’re heading. A taster in this thread.🧪 1/n

Pickets all over Edinburgh this morning! From Old College to King's Building, Edinburgh UCU staff are saying NO to job cuts!

#PhD opportunity: Join us in St Andrews to study brain health and healthy aging with data driven approaches in collaboration with brainsciences.scot as part of the EASTBIO DTP www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Solidarity in action on the picket line at George Square! @ucuscotland.bsky.social

🎓 Two PhD defences this month @ MPI for Psycholinguistics! - Gökberk Alagöz: Human brain evolution from genomics & transcriptomics (12 Nov, 14:30) - Sara Mazzini: Brain synchrony in dialogue (18 Nov, 10:30) Open to all join us! More info here: www.mpi.nl/events #PhDdefence #MPI

theconversation.com/the-uks-weal...?