New paper out today 🧵 Flexible methods for species distribution modeling with small samples (Ecography, OA). nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

This #openaccess work was a collaborative effort with Robbie Richards, Ben Carlson, @jdrakephd.bsky.social, and Cory Merow. All code and data are freely available on Github (github.com/bmaitner/sma...) or Dryad (doi.org/10.5061/drya...).

After experimenting for a few months, I've decided mostly to migrate over to Substack. I hope those who follow me here and previously followed me on Twitter will forgive the disruption and click below to follow me there.

Our new paper in #HealthSecurity argues that epidemic intelligence needs a #systems-of-systems framework—integrating #epidemiology, behavior, supply chains, policy, and ecology—rather than siloed models that talk past one another. Includes an #H5N1 case study. www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1177/...

A challenge in epidemic forecasting is that ML models overfit while mechanistic models miss changing transmission conditions. Our new JR Soc Interface paper tests whether physics-informed neural networks—which embed an epidemiological ODE system inside a neural net—can address this.

Biological modeling is organized inquiry, but how should we think about the process? My new paper in #EcologyLetters argues that we should model like experimentalists: define treatments, measure responses, validate, perturb, repeat. 👉 doi.org/10.1111/ele.... Do you agree?

New essay out in #Science: why is the human fatality rate from the current #H5N1 outbreak so much lower than in past outbreaks? I explore three possible explanations—and what they mean for pandemic risk. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Newly expanded version of my guide to scientific writing -- known as the “15 steps” -- published in PLOS Computational Biology. Special thanks to Éric Marty for creating a fantastic visualization. Check it out: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... #ScientificWriting #PLOSComputationalBiology

Excited to share that I’m joining @bigbiology.bsky.social this season as a recurring guest host. Marty Martin and I teamed up on my first episode with @jaapderoode.bsky.social, and it's just dropped. Hope you enjoy it. #diseaseecology

“Globalisation, global change and emerging infectious diseases” with @jdrakephd.bsky.social How do globalisation and climate change influence the rise of new pandemics? Join in person or online – open to all. Register: www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/events/globa... Stream: youtube.com/live/80kXZlQ...

Biological modeling is organized inquiry, but how should we think about the process? My new paper in #EcologyLetters argues that we should model like experimentalists: define treatments, measure responses, validate, perturb, repeat. 👉 doi.org/10.1111/ele.... Do you agree?

Why are flu vaccination rates stuck? We studied how “medical mindsets” (naturalist/technologist, minimalist/maximalist, doubter/believer) affect vaccine hesitancy. These attitudes matter and could help tailor communication to boost uptake. Read about it in #Vaccine 👉 doi.org/10.1016/j.va...

What if we take a systems approach to thinking about transboundary animal diseases? Our framework, just out in #TrendsInParasitology, suggests common vulnerabilities and opportunities for intervention. #TADs authors.elsevier.com/a/1lshW5Eb1x...

New essay out in #Science: why is the human fatality rate from the current #H5N1 outbreak so much lower than in past outbreaks? I explore three possible explanations—and what they mean for pandemic risk. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Newly expanded version of my guide to scientific writing -- known as the “15 steps” -- published in PLOS Computational Biology. Special thanks to Éric Marty for creating a fantastic visualization. Check it out: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... #ScientificWriting #PLOSComputationalBiology

How do human-wildlife interfaces and seasonality interact during disease emergence? Our team has created a model, inspired by the #spillover of #Ebola, to better understand the interplay. Read more about our research: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Science philanthropy is alive and well. Schmidt Sciences has just announced eight new awards through its Schmidt Polymaths program. www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Ever read a paper & think, "wow 🤩 that was well written"? Learn how to write your own *wow* paper with @midas-network.bsky.social trainees on Thurs 9/25 @ noon ET. We'll hear from @jdrakephd.bsky.social on strategies for crafting & communicating a good story. 🔗 georgetown.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Interesting work by Kris Parag and Sandor Beregi using model predictive control for timing NPIs. 👉 Read my Forbes piece: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Universities everywhere are now grappling with policies on the use of AI in research and writing, raising fascinating broader questions about how AI might (or should) figure in scholarly work. What are your thoughts—beyond the usual tropes (“AI isn’t an author,” “the human is responsible,” etc.)?

Full details of #H5N1 infection in a San Francisco child last year—with no known source—were just published in the MMWR. Case report → www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes... My take at forbes.com → www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Trying something new: a Substack. It’s called Drake’s Dispatches. Occasional essays, columns, and notes on science, health, environment, and other stuff. First post is up: jdrakephd.substack.com

What stands out to me is not only the scale of the mobilization, but the silence it has met. When the top 0.1% of scientists, engineers, and physicians are compelled to act collectively, you would expect their message to command attention. www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

We finally have a proper breakdown of the 70 human cases of H5N1 in the USA thanks to Melissa Rolfes and other CDC scientists. Great paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... My thoughts here: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

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...

A rare Salmonella strain has reemerged in the US, traced to pet bearded dragons. 27 cases, mostly infants. Same strain as 10 yrs ago. My take in Forbes on what this means for public health—and for the reptile trade. www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Given the tremendous diversity of microorganisms in the world, why do only a small fraction cause disease? My essay in #PLOSBiology argues that the answer is lack of opportunity and that humans encounter only one new bacterial pathogen for every 1.4b years lived. journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

I spoke with Kari Jordan and Erin Becker of The Carpentries about why they declined a $1.5M NSF grant intended to expand data science training. Their decision highlights the growing intersection of #science, #DEI, and federal policy. Read the full story on Forbes: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

New in #EcologyLetters: How does extinction time scale with habitat size? An experiment with #Daphnia found strong support for power law—not exponential—scaling. A rare test of a big theoretical question. Link: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #Ecology #Extinction #Scaling #Microcosms

Congrats to @jdrakephd.bsky.social on the important achievement of winning our* infectious disease pub quiz. Honorable mentions to Corin Yeats, Luca Ferretti, @christophraser.bsky.social and @aliciagill.bsky.social * the Pandemic Sciences Institute; Data, Epidemiology and Analytics section

Global #influenza surveillance has long focused on farms, markets, and clinical settings. But new evidence suggests that sampling wild bird droppings could play a critical role in detecting emerging flu threats earlier and in places that are otherwise hard to monitor. www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Hundreds of early-career scientists are writing letters to their hometown papers to connect Americans with science. The McClintock Letters Project is about trust, story, and the future of science in America. 🧬📬 Read more: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr... #ScienceCommunication #McClintockLetters

Please to be presenting today at the 74th Annual International Conference on Diseases in Nature Communicable to Humans on our latest work using #MachineLearning to understand the ecology of emerging #Arboviruses

A federal judge ruled Trump-era NIH grant cuts “void and illegal,” citing discrimination. I wrote for Forbes about the implications for science funding and institutional trust. 🔗 www.forbes.com/sites/johndr... #NIH #SciencePolicy #Forbes

Nearly 4,000 federal science grants terminated. A group of volunteers built Grant Watch to track it—now their data is showing up in court. I talked to Noam Ross about how it started and what it means. www.forbes.com/sites/johndr... #ScienceIsEssential #GrantWatch #NIH #NSF #ACLU #DataJournalism

“All of science is underfunded—and now we really mean it.” Former NSF Director France Córdova on the future of American science. My piece for Forbes: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

An interesting question is *why* we have this pattern. I suspect there are multiple contributing factors, perhaps not all bad. #ScienceOfScience

Fascinating new paper shows that when researchers “pivot” to new areas of work the outcome is less impactful. #ScienceOfScience www.nature.com/articles/s41...

$90M from the Leinweber Foundation to support theoretical physics at 5 top U.S. institutions. The largest gift ever to the field—and a rare example of long-view support for basic research. I spoke with Larry Leinweber and France Córdova to get the scoop for #forbes www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Is science slowing down? A recent article in Nature suggests that it is. But, maybe scientific innovation is just harder to measure now that the frontier of knowledge is broader and more complex. From where I sit, discovery feels more fertile than ever. www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Lots of great questions on my last post about the dismantling of NSF. Why not let private companies fund science? What do we get for public R&D? www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Original paper here: academic.oup.com/jid/advance-...

Did the 1918 flu pandemic start in horses? New paper by Furmanski & Murcia makes the case. I wrote about it here: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

#ScienceMagazine reports that NSF is to be drastically restructured www.science.org/content/arti...

New paper (OA in #EcologyLetters) with Jill Anderson, Jeb Byers & @johnwares.bsky.social! We introduce two hypotheses—variability damping & variability adaptation—to explore how past climate variability might shape species’ futures on a more dynamic planet. 🔗 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Fascinating new work by Emile Michels and colleagues in #EcologyLetters showing game bird releases increase Borrelia, the bacterium that causes #Lyme disease by more than 2x. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... My thoughts in the #Science section at Forbes.com www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Flu strain 1C H1N2 has spilled over from pigs to humans 29 times. It replicates in human airway cells, transmits via air in animals—even with prior flu immunity—and escapes most people’s antibodies. We don’t know how severe it would be. But it bears watching. 🔗 www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Flexible Methods for Species Distribution Modeling with Small Samples See our preprint in work led by @maitner.bsky.social. We compare 3 alternatives to Maxent for rare species and find that flexible, ensemble-based approaches often perform better. 🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #Ecology #SDM

Thanks to Fabian Dablander and Denny Borsboom for a fantastic symposium on resilience in complex systems at IAS Amsterdam. Great to see such rich interdisciplinary exchange. Slides here: docs.google.com/presentation... #Resilience #ComplexSystems #InterdisciplinaryScience

In his keynote at the 2025 Oxford LEAP Conference, Oxford Martin School professor Paul Behrens argued that a global shift toward plant-based diets is inevitable, not for moral reasons—but because the resource demands of current food systems are unsustainable. www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...