I wrote about the bizarre case of Herasight, the embryo selection company going all in on eugenics.

Thank you Alex! Excited to see our paper published in @nature.com ! Huge thanks to @jeffspence.github.io , @tkyzeng.bsky.social , @emmamarydann.bsky.social, @nikhilmilind.dev, @marsonlab.bsky.social, @jkpritch.bsky.social, and all the members of the Pritchard and Marson labs for your enormous help!

After time in the Bay Area, I’ve started a new role as Lecturer in the Department of Allergy and Rheumatology at the University of Tokyo. We’re the group of clinicians who see patients with autoimmune diseases, while researching new treatments and patient stratification. (continued)

“What I do think is that it has become normalized in modern behavioral genomics to do what you have to do in order to make every result, no matter how small, look like a win for team genetics” ericturkheimer.substack.com/p/within-fam...

I taught Genetics again this year. We need to include discussion of the problematic history of our field, especially as the claims of eugenics are once again centered in our political discourse. Last year I wrote this piece, explaining my reasoning and approach 🧪 1/n www.cell.com/trends/genet...

My first lead author paper is out with Ben Kerr and @alisonfeder.bsky.social! We found that making an antiviral too strong can sometimes make resistance easier to evolve. This has implications for how we design drugs, choose doses, and think about viral evolution in the face of treatment. (1/n)

And this. My experience also supports that being *more* open about racist, sexist, and ableist histories of our fields is more engaging, not less, for students (and faculty) from minoritized backgrounds. Transparency can only enhance rigor.

12 former commissioners of the FDA came together to write a Perspectives piece for the New England Journal of Medicine; raising our concerns about recent changes to vaccine approval policy at the FDA and its implications for patients and public health.

It was a total pleasure to work with @roshnipatel.bsky.social on this, who really led the charge in all respects. Anyone interested in learning about the intersection of population genetics and statistical genetics should check out her new lab in Oregon!

As promised, a longer thread on what I consider to be some of the most interesting and important contributions of this paper (1/10)

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.

Excited to share work from my postdoc with @docedge.bsky.social and collaborators Matt Pennell and @jgschraiber.bsky.social, newly out over the weekend: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... (1/6)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... We finally submitted the earlier preprint to a journal after massive restructuring. We've expanded the REML section for those interested in the method. We clarify that ARG-LMM estimates mutational variance and not additive variance.

I taught (and co-taught) a course on human population genetics from 2000-2024. Having retired, I'm now making all the course materials public: github.com/alanrogers/p... #popgen #evbio

Out now in @natgenet.nature.com, our Comment analyzing uses of the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), a controversial dataset in human genomics research. A 🧵 rdcu.be/eRu65 1/

Excited to share a preprint of my PhD project looking at interactions between SNPs and polygenic scores in the UK Biobank! A thread... 🧵 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

In #GENETICS, @alan-aw.bsky.social et al. introduce models for how individual variant effects in admixed individuals may be influenced by ancestry, contributing to work on the genetic architecture of complex traits and their implications for polygenic prediction. buff.ly/34ZvEil

this is cool, and more departments should do it!

Wisconsin Evolution is accepting applications for our Seminar Series' Early Career Scientist Award. Come share your evolution research and visit UW-Madison's evolution community. Open to grad students and postdocs (<5 yrs post PhD) from outside UW-Madison. Apply by Dec 15th here: shorturl.at/4a4O6

@hakha.bsky.social and I wrote a Research Briefing (with a lay summary + "behind the scenes") of our paper on how genes are prioritized by GWAS and rare variant burden tests. 🧬🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

My experience with the academic job market is that there is simply far more luck involved than the vast majority of people are comfortable saying. Which departments are even hiring, what internal politics mean for the research topics they want, what fields the NSF has postdocs for, etc.

My department at UT Austin is looking to hire an Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology, broadly defined. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have. apply.interfolio.com/177547

We don't want people to think you can see evil in the genome, but we'll call our Channel 4 documentary "Hitler's DNA: Blueprint of a dictator".

Today is the day! Our reply to the two concurrent critiques (from the same set of authors) is now published in the journal Intelligence 🧵 1/

NEW: ProPublica examined months of Fox News’ coverage and reviewed over 700 videos posted on social media. The network used five-year-old footage, mislabeled other dates and implied footage from elsewhere was in Portland.

Are you an early-stage graduate student (2nd or 3rd year) or early-stage postdoc based in the US or Canada, working primarily in Drosophila? Would you like to help improve the experience of all trainees working in Drosophila research? If so, read on. (Please repost to reach a broad audience.)

There's an exclusive, closed-to-media MAHA summit tomorrow. Here's the full agenda I was leaked In attendance will be JD Vance, RFK Jr, Bhattacharya, Makary, actor Russell Brand (who is facing rape and sexual assault charges), and dozens of other MAHA influencers and people in Trump's orbit

Come and join us here in Cambridge! Applications open for a new faculty position, for a researcher in computational and/or theoretical biology, based jointly in Genetics and Mathematics. Happy to answer questions about research, teaching and working here. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/faculty...

An empirical approach to evaluating the prevalence of long-lived balancing selection in humans--and important limitations. Work by @hannahmm.bsky.social

How do GWAS and rare variant burden tests rank gene signals? In new work @nature.com with @hakha.bsky.social, @jkpritch.bsky.social, and our wonderful coauthors we find that the key factors are what we call Specificity, Length, and Luck! 🧬🧪🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We're excited to share the final version of our paper, where we demonstrate how confounding remains a thorny problem for claims about causal genetic influences on human behavioral and socioeconomic outcomes. (w/ @jedidiahcarlson.com @oliviarxiv.bsky.social Ruth Shaw @arbelharpak.bsky.social) 🧵👇

@jbenning.bsky.social @jedidiahcarlson.com et al. exemplify how confounding can lead to flawed inference on genetic causality. In studies of human behavior and social outcomes, the cost of downplaying this problem can be steep. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.... bsky.app/profile/jben...

The Leading Edge Fellows gathered this week to celebrate Zara Weinberg, a beloved member of our community. Our 7th cohort of Leading Edge Fellows (2026) will be named in her honor. The Zara Weinberg Leading Edge Cohort application is now open! Due Feb 2. www.leadingedgesymposium.org/apply/

I wrote this in June and the disgusting way since then that Cuomo and the oligarchs have been willing to tear the social fabric of the city apart to stop him has only made it more true and Zohran’s victory more thunderous. Next we stop ICE.

Zara Weinberg passed away earlier this week. She joined my lab earlier this year when her postdoc lab formally closed. She was a brilliant scientist, supportive mentor, dear friend, avid music fan, rabid believer in public transit, open science champion, and above all just an amazing human.

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-... 🧵

The dream of every Muslim is simply to be treated the same as any other New Yorker. And yet, for too long, we have been told to ask for less than that, and endure hatred and bigotry in the shadows. No more.

Mamdani: "The dream of every Muslim is simply to be treated the same as every other New Yorker. And yet for too long we have been told to ask for less than that and to be satisfied with whatever little we receive. No more."

Mamdani: "More than one million Muslims in this city, existing while being made to feel that we are guests in our own home. No more."

There are no free lunches except for vaccines

I am hiring! - looking for a Staff Scientist to co-run my research group with me. Staff Scientist is a senior professional scientist role at EMBL. Please forward to people you might know who could be interested! embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

@joann-trejo.bsky.social, @marymunson4.bsky.social and I have a commentary in @natcellbio.nature.com on recent attacks on DEI in biomedical research: "If scientific research, especially biomedical research, is meant to serve everyone, then it requires that everyone has an opportunity to participate"

Oh and one last thing: it provides a SKILL based argument for things like the PDEP and contributions to DEI statements, critically illustrating that these were NOT ideological statements but competencies that more diverse training environments required for the benefit of all trainees

reminder that my (wonderful, diverse, interdisciplinary) department at the University of Oregon is seeking applications for an Associate/Full Professor of Data Science -- deadline 10/31 and only cover letter/CV needed to apply academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30328

In response to anti-DEI legislation in the states, universities have started to hire more white male faculty. This increase starts before bills are signed into law. Universities appear to be anticipating anti-DEI legislation and preemptively hiring more white men.

reminder that my (wonderful, diverse, interdisciplinary) department at the University of Oregon is seeking applications for an Associate/Full Professor of Data Science -- deadline 10/31 and only cover letter/CV needed to apply academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30328

I'm recruiting a postdoc for my group (based in beautiful Eugene, OR). Please get in touch if you're interested, esp if you'd like to chat at #ASHG25!

Aaaahhh! The cat’s outta the bag - I’m officially on this year’s #Out100 list! What an honor to join this illustrious group of LGBTQIA+ artists, educators, innovators, and disruptors, all united in our fights for representation and efforts to amplify queer voices. www.out.com/out100/2025/...

We're excited to be recruiting an NIH funded postdoc to work in the Coop lab at UC Davis. We're specifically interested in candidates who are want to work at the intersection of human genetics, GWAS, and population genetics modeling. Please RT