Some personal news: I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting. Thread incoming. substack.com/@karenattiah...

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species go.nature.com/4mOb5T9

Just a heads up to anyone using Firefox:

An ambitious new report, commissioned by #TheLancet, seeks to reframe #OneHealth to be an even more encompassing framework. I spoke with co-chairs Andrea Winkler and John Amuasi about their process. The report: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... My interview: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

“The study authors asked GPT 4o-mini to evaluate the quality of 217 papers. The tool didn’t mention in any of the reports that the papers being analyzed had been retracted or had validity issues. In 190 cases, GPT described the papers as world leading, internationally excellent, or close to that”

Associate Professor position in animal physiology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (to replace me basically). An amazing permanent position at a great university! Please spread widely 🙏 www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Vaccines are our greatest scientific achievement. This is criminal.

WTF? I was quoted in this story but I have never spoken to the reporter nor would I have said those things. Is everything just generated by LLMs these days? cosmosmagazine.com/earth/oceans...

Do ectotherms age more strongly in warm environments? And if so, does it mean reduced fitness and population viability in a warmer world? We investigated these questions in a recent study based on an experiment with Daphnia magna (1/7) @t-ergon.bsky.social @biovitenskap.bsky.social

Would you pay $169 for an introductory ebook on machine learning with citations that appear to be made up? Intern Rita Aksenfeld's first story for Retraction Watch

“Historically, no one lived past age 35” "I’ve heard *so* many versions of this claim, including recently from a menopause doctor (implying menopause is not “natural” because noone lived long enough to go through it). Every time someone states this “fact,” a demographer loses a piece of their soul"

I’ve warned that this was only a matter of time, but it’s still shocking to see in person. Here AI generated content is being used to create a fake news ecosystem, disparaging a professor who has been critical of unscientific bullshit in the form of deextinction hype.

Entire Fulbright board quits, citing Trump administration interference

Proposed cut to NSF Biology budget is 70%. 70%. Seventy. Call your senators & reps nonstop. Give them numbers on NSF impact for state/district. tableau.external.nsf.gov/views/NSFbyN... explain this will decimate the economy if their districts, especially if it has a major research univ. 🧪

🚨 URGENT RESPONSE CALL 🚨 Trump’s Fool’s Gold Science EO is a dangerous sham. It gives his appointees the power to dismiss entire bodies of research and punish researchers who fail to fall in line with his agenda. We’ve launched an open letter. SIGN & SHARE NOW: actionnetwork.org/petitions/op...

NSF grant terminations are disproportionately affecting underrepresented scientists. 58% of canceled grants have women PIs, despite making up only 34% of awards. 17% of canceled grants have Black PIs (versus 4% of the pool). Hispanic and disabled PIs are twice as likely to have NSF grants canceled.

I wrote about the widespread adoption of AI in education, and why there needs to be more resistance to it open.substack.com/pub/irinadum...

What scientists know as "mites" is almost certainly an artificial taxonomic group, according to recent phylogenetic analyses and studies using advanced microscopic techniques.

In only two years, ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project. James D. Walsh writes for @intelligencer.com: nymag.com/intelligence....

The Department of Natural History at NTNU is seeking an ambitious candidate for an open position as associate professor in vertebrate evolutionary genomics. Please see 👇 for details. Deadline for applications is May 25. www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

The final question in the exam for one my online classes is "What is the most exciting or useful thing you learned in this class?"— this time around, it was shocking to see a bunch of LLM-generated answers (one even including "Certainly, I can help you think of something useful from your class…") 😢

Has anyone else caught on to this?

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

Looking for a PhD? There is an opening for a PhD-student in evolutionary ecology on phenotypic plasticity in aquatic organisms at NTNU in Trondheim, Norway – with two super-good supervisors (Sigurd Einum and Tim Burton) - highly recommended! www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

This is Wisdom, the oldest known wild bird in the world. Estimated at 74 years old, this Laysan albatross has outlived multiple partners and still lays eggs, with her last chick hatching on January 30, 2025. Since 1956, she has survived earthquakes, tsunamis, and had her tag changed six times.

I wrote about how population stratification in genetic analyses led to a decade of false findings and almost certainly continues to bias emerging results. But we are starting to have statistical tools to sniff it out. A 🧵:

For a long time we've known about the negative impacts of over-abundant deer in global forests. A sudden crash in their populations from Chronic Wasting Disease is not necessarily to be welcomed though. 1/12 🌏 🧪🌐

Trump, Musk, Vance, Vought, etc are systematically destroying: 1. Scientific research in the United States. 2. The talent pipeline for this research. 3. The university system itself. 4. The careers of thousands of people like Dr. Minor For what? Politics? Resentment? Thiel? Putin? Thread:

Lower survival rate among trainees in labs with highly productive mentors raises important concerns about what we value in academia. Many interesting things to stew over with this paper! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

“We are losing sight of the academic mission: to think, to enquire, to design and perform new research, to innovate, to teach and communicate our findings for the purpose of societal improvement” academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

Nothing will kill more children than the ongoing decimation of CDC, NIH, and USAID work to lift vaccine uptake in the US and world. Child survival rose 75% in the last 50 years. Vaccines account for 40% of that. Measles vax alone was 60% of the benefit. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Registration to the 10th annual Evolutionary Demography Society is now open. See you all at @pembrokeoxford.bsky.social 22-24 Sept 2025. Early-bird ends April 15th: evodemo2025.weebly.com Please share @biology.ox.ac.uk @oxforddemsci.bsky.social @britishecologicalsociety.org @evoldir.bsky.social

In case RFK Jr convinced you that he is not anti-vax, but merely "skeptical" & concerned about vaccine safety...look here NIH is terminating awards to obtain reliable data on vaccine hesitancy & ways to improve uptake. This is an explicitly anti-vax policy. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Here’s my contribution to the issue on Wilson’s legacy: the sociobiology debate may have led the human evolutionary behavioural sciences down a path which resulted in scientific critique of bad science being dismissed as ideological “censorship”, making it harder to counter misuse of the discipline

Why basic research matters and defunding and firing scientists will cost us. Many life-saving breakthroughs started as curiosity-driven science with no clear application. Yet, these discoveries once seen as obscure ended up transforming medicine. Here’s why funding basic science is essential. A 🧵👇

Please enjoy my last ever post at Climate.gov/ENSO Blog. This afternoon I was fired by the Trump Administration 15 days before my 2yr probationary period ended on March 13. I have worked at NOAA since 2010, and I'm so incredibly proud of the work I did. If anyone wants a quote, let me know.

The NIH funding freeze has blocked 3 of our grant proposals (so far), which threatens to shut down our Lyme disease research program within a year. 🦠🧫🧪🧬🔬 #MicroSky www.reuters.com/business/hea...

I had two grant proposals up for review in the NIH Bacterial Virulence (BV) study section. It was canceled without notice this morning. Without those grants, my lab must close within a year. And so the purge of scientific research in the US continues 🤬 #MicroSky 🦠🧫🧪🧬🔬

I maxed out my credit card, emptied my savings account, and took out a loan to move from Alabama to Bethesda, MD. I don’t even qualify for unemployment since I’ve only worked at NIH for a month. I will be financially and medically devastated. Seeking suggestions for anywhere that’s hiring!!

Happy International Day of Women in Science. The National Science Foundation’s list of flagged words includes both “Women” and “Female.”

Lifetime reproductive success (LRS) is a key metric in evolutionary biology and ecology. But what counts as a success? And whose successes do we count? @sevans.bsky.social doesn't shy away from the big questions in this new paper just out in @journal-evo.bsky.social: academic.oup.com/evolut/artic...

Whenever you hear someone sneer about scientific research that seems useless to them — “they’re studying the spit of lizards?!” — remind them that’s exactly how we got Ozempic. globalnews.ca/news/9793403...

The most iconic figure in the environmental sciences is the Keeling Curve, the CO₂ record from Mauna Loa, Hawaii. @noaa.gov had a wonderful site where you could visualize and download these data, and now it's just gone. These data belong to us and we should not let this happen!

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take. thebullshitmachines.com

This is not business as usual. It’s not just a change in funding priorities going forward; it is the reneging on funding agreements and is profoundly disruptive for even those grants that will be found to be compliant. Meanwhile, trainees who often live paycheck to paycheck are going unpaid.

A first job related post. We have an open PhD student position in freshwater microbial ecology in our lab. www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Every week, I check the CDC's Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report. This week for the first time in its 60 years it was not published on schedule. American healthcare workers all over the country are less informed about health crises that affect their patients. CDC led reports matter a 🧵

I know it’s cold out but NY has issued an urgent call for type O+ and O- blood donations — you don’t need all that blood do you? www.nybc.org/new-york-blo...

We're still seeking candidates interested in causal inference and/or survival analysis for a postdoc position in Oslo. Deadline January 31. Please apply or forward this to anyone who might be interested! www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Delighted to see the final version of my paper for @asn-amnat.bsky.social appear online. In it, I analyze stochastic matrix models to partition the effects of spatial and temporal variation in demography and dispersal on metapopulation growth rates www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... 1/n