No reaction on the stock market. Yet. Realizing something major is about to happen before it does is a funny feeling.

Earlier this week I posted an example of a fake western blot provided by ThermoFisher to demonstrate the validity of a p53 antibody. I considered it an amusing curiosity. In fact Thermo Fisher Scientific has systematically manipulated antibody validation data!

Companies selling faulty products by accident recall them and reimburse the customers. Some cost, some (temporary) loss in prestige perhaps. No one goes to jail. This is not the case here. This is more akin to the Theranos or VW emission scandals. And people did go to jail for these.

It is apparently not just this one validation of this one antibody, but a slew of them (shorturl.at/hX75U). A researcher or lab faking one WB is serious. A major company faking many WBs is far more serious, as researchers use these antibodies, trusting they have already been validated.

And tool number 33,000 in bio.tools is... RatioPath, Python library for large-scale processing, analysis, and transformation of whole-slide pathology images (WSIs)!

Very sad news. Venter was one of the most impressive scientists I met during my studies (or anytime since).

Is there a way to help non-coder proteomics pros, AI-pros who don't know proteomics, or total novices vibe code proteomics software with confidence? Maybe. We are proposing a epistemic grounding context file, but there is still a ton left to do: arxiv.org/abs/2604.21744 @magnuspalmblad.bsky.social

Want to contribute to ELIXIR's Toxicology Community and talk roadmap and strategy? There are still a few in-person seats available for the upcoming Toxicology Community Meeting in beautiful Maastricht: elixir-europe.org/events/toxic.... The meeting is supported by ELIXIR, and free to attend.

Feeling lucky today! I even thought to myself that this is not a Wordle word, but it was!

A bit late to the game, perhaps, but I finally managed to run a small Qwen on my laptop NPU. Not sure how useful it is, but at least I can play around without slowing down the rest of the system...

New Open Access paper in Glycobiology: Semantic Annotation of Glycomics and Glycoproteomics Methods. We show that combining multiple ontologies captures glyco(proteo)mics workflows better than any single ontology, while also revealing key metadata gaps. doi.org/10.1093/glyc...

Open and sustainable AI: challenges, opportunities and the road ahead in the life sciences: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Note the date on the membership card of a certain founder of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, parent company of Springer Nature, BMC, Macmillan and owner of products such as Overleaf, Figshare, Altmetric, Dimensions, etc. Definitely an early supporter. catalog.archives.gov/id/589141128...

Our paper out today combines my love of blood proteomics and a seriously awesome group of experts I am humbled to be included alongside. Thanks to @ypriverol.bsky.social and Asier Larrea-Sebal for leading. This is a great modern review with a nod to non-MS data. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

You can apparently get anything into Nature Portfolio's Scientific Reports: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... Was there any peer review or editorial checks at all? Even of the title and abstract? Safe to say I am not submitting my manuscripts there.

Less is more, alma mater.

This week's cover @thelancet.com

I don't know if the 15-T or we have aged better (from 2014 to 2026):

Software metadata crosswalks in practise: a bidirectional bridge between the largest open-source repository platform and the largest bioinformatics software registry: doi.org/10.37044/osf...

So close to getting today's Wordle in two guesses (starting from SOARE, as usual). It was even the first word I thought of, but then overthought it, thinking "it can't be that word", and went with one more common in computer science...

Cricket is so confusing. I read that "India restricted the Netherlands to 176/7 after posting 193/6". But who won? And by how much? Or is the match still ongoing? So confusing.

IMSC 2026 abstract submission server seems to be down... Anyone else having issues at the moment?

Great initiative by ACS - but Switzerland is not in the Balkans last time I checked... 😀

Great and very productive workshop on trustworthiness in proteomics in Leiden last week (www.lorentzcenter.nl/trustworthin...). 🥇 to whomever first gets what the photo in the background has to do with the topic. No cheating allowed!

A Minneapolis knitting shop has resurrected the design of a Norwegian cap worn to protest Nazi occupation. Its owner says the money raised from hat pattern sales will support the local immigrant community. n.pr/4thWiUr

𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 “𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗿𝗲𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗱𝗲”: 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝟱𝟬% 𝗼𝗳𝗳! To remove road blocks and to stimulate open and reproducible code development, we now reduce the costs for this workshop on 4 February. (People that already registered will get a 50% refund). buff.ly/OcbtjJC

TIL about a new #chemistry flagship journal, but the German Chemical Society, full #openaccess, kind of up-lifting from Angewandte Chemie (their words: "up-transfer"): Angewandte Chemie Novit https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202503680 From the citations of the first articles, it does not seem to […]

We're hiring an intern! Apply here.

Gävlebocken summarizes 2025: youtube.com/shorts/hjd6Z...

Finally a direct train from Amsterdam to Hamburg: nos.nl/artikel/2593.... Hamburg is the "gateway to Scandinavia", with regular direct connections to Copenhagen and soon both day- and night trains to Stockholm. Now all we need is a train bridge over Ems for a more direct route to Bremen and Hamburg.

New blog! ✍️ The DReaMS community is committed to advancing research software management (RSM) through training, and emphasising the importance of sustainability, version control, and FAIR and Open Science. Read the account of the community meetup: blog.esciencecenter.nl/strengthenin...

British insults are fantastic. Just heard someone (else) being referred to as being "wetter than a Wednesday in Whitstable".

HypoVax Global is building a comprehensive knowledge hub of AI-ready immunological data to better understand why populations respond differently to vaccines and inform immunization strategies to overcome vaccine hyporesponsiveness: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Adjective of the day: softwareengineeringy.

Stuck in Gare de Lyon, as the TGV that was supposed to leave over an hour ago, is still on the platform. However, the station's restaurant did not disappoint!

Brief observations: ASMS Meeting: 🍺→ 👩‍👩‍👦‍👦👨‍👩‍👦‍👦👨‍👨‍👧‍👧👩‍👩‍👦‍👦, always questions/proposals. HUPO General Assembly of Members: No 🍺→ 🪑🪑🙍🪑, no questions.

"Biomarker studies are the greatest reproducibility crisis in science" (M. Uhlén, 2025).

HUPO-PSI AI-Readiness Working Group launching into orbit from the Bioinformatics Hub @hupo-org.bsky.social! 10... 9... 8...

Final days of hacking at @elixir-europe.org #BioHackEU25! Project #5: Bidirectional bridge: GitHub ⇄ bio.tools making slow but steady progress on translating research software metadata between these two platforms. Always a great opportunity to learn new things and get to know new people as well.

To my metabolomics friends: what is the closest to a FASTA file for small molecules? Something with PubChem or perhaps ChEBI identifiers in a metadata header followed by a SMILES or some other structural representation?

This may be AI generated, but I think the idea is brilliant. If you had trouble to stay awake in history class, this is guaranteed to help you fall asleep: youtu.be/v3vj74019H0?.... Unfortunately, I am too interested in history for this to work on me. Maybe quantum mechanics would work? 🤔

Shot twice today - once in the left arm (covid) and once in the right (flu). Probably best to bike home while my arms still work...

Setting the benchmark for a good morning: back-to-back @ausbiocommons.bsky.social webinars by Veit Schwämmle and @tineclaeys.bsky.social with 07:00 coffee!

ELIXIR-NL's @magnuspalmblad.bsky.social co-organized the Computational Proteomics Dagstuhl Seminar 2025, uniting experts in ML/AI for proteomics. Breakouts sparked collaborations, manuscripts, and proposals, making this the most productive seminar yet. #Proteomics #Dagstuhl #Collaboration

First results from Olink Reveal: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/.... Ground-truth data in PRIDE (www.ebi.ac.uk/pride/archiv...) and analysis code on OSF (osf.io/as4gv).

We are looking for a 3-year postdoc to work with Daniel Probst, Justin van der Hooft and myself on an exciting project involving federated learning and integrative omics for discovery of new antibiotics from natural products. Apply here: www.wur.nl/en/vacancy/p... Please share!