I simply have no argument against this. 🇮🇪

Born 9 Nov 1934, cosmologist Carl Sagan. He co-wrote the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The most widely watched series in the history of American public television, Cosmos has been seen by at least 500 million people in 60 countries. #CarlSagan

In an interview with ScienceInsider, science historian Nathaniel Comfort reflects on James Watson’s legacy. https://scim.ag/47ykE3q

I've often wondered why Brenda Maddox included this picture of "Rosalind-wearing glasses" in The Dark Lady of DNA. Was it to highlight one of the silliest controversies surrounding Rosalind Franklin?

As this article shows, the path to the double helix was much more complex than many think and the details are still being uncovered.

“It suited the feminism of the 1960s & 1970s to portray her as a victim of male dominance, but she would have thought of herself simply as a scientist whose achievements should have been judged on their own terms, not as a ‘woman scientist’ striking a blow for the rights of women.”🧪

"His decoding the blueprint for life with Francis H.C. Crick made him one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. He wrote a celebrated memoir and later ignited an uproar with racist views." 🧪

Happy 158th Birthday, Marie Skłodowska Curie! She was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize and the first person to receive the honor twice. In 2017, #ScienceBooks toured the dynamics that established her as "the most iconic of all female scientists." https://scim.ag/47tkKYA

UK publication day for this wrist-spraining beauty! Appropriately, I’m travelling to Cambridge, where I’m doing a book launch talk at the LMB tomorrow afternoon.

We know President Trump is no friend of science or of providing health care to those who need it. The data and evidence show: acceptance and appropriate healthcare save kids’ lives. Get the facts: act.ucsusa.org/4qFhdQ1

I added a short section to this preprint describing another simple and inexplicable error that Bruttel et al. have repeated for years.

Yesterday, the Academy welcomed the recipients of the 2025 Prime Minister's Prizes for Science to the Shine Dome for the traditional celebration breakfast. 📸 Recipients of Prime Minister’s Prizes with Professor Chennupati Jagadish AC at the Shine Dome in Canberra.

Huge win for humpbacks! Dozens of humpbacks are entangled in fishing gear off the Pacific Coast every year, but it was just announced that a federal task force will be formed to curb these entanglements. This announcement stems from our 2023 legal victory. Read on ➡️ bit.ly/47C4sNj

So much science and personality in 2 paragraphs. Made my day. 🧪

Absolutely amazing: they've got so much solar in Australia that they need more people to use more of it, so the gov't has instructed energy retailers to offer *at least three hours of free power* during the middle of the day. Meanwhile fossil-addled US struggles with an energy-price crisis ...

You might have seen (since she gets so much undeserved attention) Kim Kardashian's new BS about the moon landings being faked? Here is Phil Plait's takedown of what he calls "a huge flaming load of ulcerous garbage." Thank you, Phil. @philplait.bsky.social badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/kim-kardas...

Book review 📚 Sex, drugs and the conscious brain: Francis Crick beyond the double helix go.nature.com/4oJQAra

Congratulations to Distinguished Prof Lidia Morawska FAA FTSE (QUT) for being awarded the prestigious Prime Minister's Prize for Science 2025! 🎉 Prof Morawska was elected a Fellow of the Academy in 2020 and in 2023 received the Academy’s Mathew Flinders Medal.

arxiv.org/abs/2510.23833 @zachhensel.bsky.social has revisited Bruttel et al’s preprint and shows why the analysis of RE sites in SARS2 was deeply flawed. Spoiler: the sites are natural, the pattern explicable by recombination & the authors stacked the deck omitting some seqs and duplicating others.

My article in tomorrow's @theobserveruk.bsky.social now online. But go and buy a copy!

I wonder if anyone is dressed as a Bionic Frog tonight?

A new bat coronavirus discovered in Brazil confirms what we already knew: nature handles furin cleavage sites just fine. Lab leakers, don’t worry, you've got the track record to pivot seamlessly to a career in creative fiction writing. Quick update on the news: open.substack.com/pub/protagon...

I don’t read substack articles, even from people I like, I know I’m probably missing out , but would rather read a book instead. But I’ll post this one to promote it, because @philippmarkolin.bsky.social did the world a great service with his book, and making it accessible for everyone.

Oh boy.........

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House. Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity. They are not the same.

Breaking news: To avoid criminal prosecution for allegations of animal abuse, the second-largest breeder of research dogs in the United States will stop providing animals to research labs around the country, according to a settlement. https://scim.ag/4hT8dCV

🧵Remember the preprint claiming SARS-CoV-2 has a "synthetic fingerprint"? It said a restriction map was "extremely unlikely to have arisen by random evolution.” I took its claims seriously. The "synthetic fingerprint" hypothesis collapses. My new preprint explains why. arxiv.org/abs/2510.23833

Plant scientists Professor Graham Farquhar and Professor Susanne von Caemmerer transformed the world's understanding of photosynthesis, and now they have been jointly awarded the Royal Medal (Biological) from The Royal Society, at a ceremony in London. science.anu.edu.au/news-events/...

Plutocrats, petrostates, polluters & propagandists who profit from the status quo don't care if you fall victim to denial, deflection, division, or despair. Same result: disengagement. Read #ScienceUnderSiege by @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social & yours truly: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/micha...

Guillermo del Toro on wealth: "a wealthy man is a man who has enough, not a man that needs more. If you have enough to invite someone for a beer? You're rich. If you have a yacht, planes, islands, and you still need more? You're not rich."

Great review of my new book with @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social, #ScienceUnderSiege, by @bpmarshall.bsky.social for the @tasmaniantimes.bsky.social: tasmaniantimes.com/2025/10/book...

A special message from our President Chennupati Jagadish AC as the Academy farewells a champion of Australian science, Dr Jim Peacock AC FAA.

Why can't we just say "DeSantis moves to harm & kill children"? 0 sympathy for silent pediatricians noted: "A lot of them don't take a strong stance on whether kids need to be vaccinated...They don't want to lose business. And there are enough anti-vax ppl who can lambaste you on Google...'"🤦 🛟😷

B cells will find a way. 🧪

I started my career characterizing autoantibodies in the serum of patients with autoimmune diseases like lupus. But to understand the genesis and pathology of those antibody responses, I had to shift to animal models. Unfortunately, "novel alternative methods" are just not suitable for our work. 🧪

We asked 3,785 PhD students across 107 countries about their experiences. Where do you think the happiest doctoral candidates were? go.nature.com/3Wzz2lL

Politics and science are poor bedfellows. Check out my latest post on Trofim Lysenko scifood.blog/2025/10/17/t...

Science chats with photographer Lindsey Wasson, who captured how Nobel winner Mary Brunkow reacted to life-changing news. https://scim.ag/3IX1uuu

Fancy that! A little jab recalls memory. 🧪

So sorry to hear of the death of John Lodge of the Moody Blues yesterday. I loved the Moodies and all their albums - especially "On The Threshold of a Dream". John, like me, hailed from Birmingham, as did most of the members of the Moodies. You'll be missed John. #JohnLodge

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie.......Oi, Oi, Oi 🧪

Of the 202 Nobelists who have been awarded prizes in physics, chemistry and medicine this century, less than 70% hail from the country in which they were awarded their prize, a Nature analysis shows. go.nature.com/48UbZJp

Remembering Mark Norell, the palaeontologist whose discoveries helped to demonstrate that birds are living dinosaurs. go.nature.com/433ddyk

Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading, Rio de Janeiro

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Mary Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi for discovering a class of immune cells that help to prevent the body from attacking its own tissues. #medsky 🧪

Being named as a Nobel laureate is the ultimate prize for many scientists, but how do other science prizes compare? go.nature.com/4q0kgBZ