Gret talk by Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social at the reproducibiliTea Basel by @swissrn.bsky.social a case study on scientific rigor. Many thanks Berna -it was very illuminating. 👏

It is almost impossible not to read this comic and also not think of @elisabethbik.bsky.social and her work..

Final discussion round with all the speakers at the swissRN workshop "How STRANGE are my animals?". Big thanks to Veronika Bokony, Catherine Hobaiter, Hanno Würbel, Elodie Chaillou, Ivana Jaric, Michael Webster and Christian Rutz for their great presentations!

Catherine Hobaiter at the swissRN workshop "How STRANGE are my animal?" explaining how S.T.R.A.N.G.E. East African chimpazee groups are.

What the #USA used to be capable of .. 😞 Happy #anniversary #America This day in 1969 you sent 3 great men to the moon, for a second time Don’t @ me conspiracy theorists You did This year you sent one of the worst examples of mankind to the White House, for a second time youtu.be/l11sW5KOi_g

Can you even imagine a pre-tomato Italy?! Weird to think that the entire history of the Roman Empire was tomato-free. 🍅 🇮🇹 🚫

"I’m actually biased in favor of the intuitive value of preregistration; but things that seem intuitively sensible can turn out to be wrong anyway. Increasingly, I’m wondering if this is one of those things."

In a misty bog, a hooligan penguin from the clan lost his trousers and his dignity to whiskey galore. The bard laughed till the bottle smashed to smithereens—that were the glory old days.

VetMed25 at the Kultuurikatel in Tallinn -a really unique venue for a scientific conference. Steampunk at its best.

So ridiculous - no doubt, that can only be sexual selection.

What about ".. our results show that more research is needed in this area"

Freaky deeeeeeer, thanks Cyndeer!

Happy to announce, my palaeoart below, won the "Impression on China" Award (II), organized by the Chinese Embassy in Poland.

c'est magnifique 🤌

Meet the team of EU-SABV! This is a group of researchers with a special interest of including sex as a biological variable into their work. For the next 4 years, this team will work to enhance current SABV policy in preclinical research! #SABV @costprogramme.bsky.social @jaricivana.bsky.social

Great talk by Mafalda Dias and Jonathan Frazer on protein prediction models at #CTCRG2025 Check out the site: www.crg.eu/en/programme...

Just heading to the #CTCRG2025 meeting. Super excited about it and looking forward to the talks. (And of course, it's a splendid idea to have this meeting in Barcelona)

So for-profit AI companies have trained on the world's largest collaborative volunteer project and a precious free resource, to make money for their for-profit enterprises. They have crushed traffic to the volunteer project, starving it of donors and volunteers www.404media.co/wikipedia-sa...

"Dunbar's Number" is a zombie that lives forever in the science press it seems. Estimates of Dunbar's Number with 95% intervals, for a range of model specifications (from doi.org/10.1098/rsbl... ):

🥳 Congratulations to @tobykiers.bsky.social for receiving a MacArthur Fellowship for her exciting work @spun.earth investigating symbiotic relationships among plants, fungi, and other microbes and their role in planetary health. 🍄

Survivor bias

Window Screen xkcd.com/3151/

For the last decades she was best known for her indefatigable commitment for conservation, but her contribution to science can't be overestimated as well. I feel priviledged to have met her on several occasions. We will miss her.

merlinbirds.org/species/ston... Giurlata, Corsica

merlinbirds.org/species/sarw... seen from the patio of our guest house in Girolata, Corsica.

Looking forward to the talk by Lisa Spitzer about "Preregistration in Psychology and Animal Studies: Bridges andPractical Tips", this Thursday as part of the animal welfare seminar series www.tierschutz.vetsuisse.unibe.ch/seminar/inde...

Upcoming events - ReproducibiliTea online Check out our calendar for more details: reproducibilitea.org/calendar #OpenResearch #OpenScience #metasci #academicsky

Finally finished. Quorridor board made out of a single piece of oak wood (with integrated drawer for the pieces). Pretty pleased.

A project started shortly before Covid hit has finally arrived in print, phew!

Late August and September: the best season for hiking in Switzerland. Visited the wild ibex colony at Augstmatthorn today.

Who is on my desk today? A yellow perch, Perca flavescens! This guy was the perfect excuse to use my gold-green paint, which is practically neon. #sciart #scientificillustration #fishart

The World Bank published population projections for 2025 in 1992. How far off were these forecasts? This map is great fun to ponder. High-res in source: ibb.co/W4KsSBhk

What a stylish victory! White to play and win 😌

The proposed Horizon Europe successor has 2x the budget, but there's a controversial catch: The previously civilian-only program will be opened to "dual-use" research with defense applications. ... that's, of course, if this thing passes the EU Parliament. New from me for @science.org 🧪

J. D. Bernal in 1939 discussing how graduate students (only a thing from 1917 in the UK) are evaluated based on number and bulk, the publication pressure stifling originality, and filling the literature with useless papers.

An Israeli strike in Gaza City late Sunday night killed six journalists, according to Al-Shifa hospital, including four from Al Jazeera.

Once upon a time, two science journalists had an idea for a blog about retractions. And on Aug. 3, 2010, Retraction Watch launched. And now, 15 years and 6,700 posts later, that work seems more important than ever. Happy 15th anniversary, Retraction Watch.

One of the challenges we faced when designing the figures for this paper (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...), was how to show representatives of many groups of fish in the phylogeny, but highlight the endothermic species such that they are emphasized and stand out for the reader. #🧪 #🐡

The interesting thing is, that officials of all those governments will confirm that THEIR map is based on evidence (where the evidence is presumably coming from the same source -most likely the UMODC statistics).

"Research can be open and reproducible and still completely and obviously wrong. Openness does not fix systemic problems in the lack of professional training and lack of professionalism in scientific research." This post resonates with me greatly and not just for the point above.

The scientific publishing system is crooked. I got really frustrated about the waste of research money and I got really angry about the stupidity of some decision makers in academia ... but you know what? I decided to stop complaining and just buy Elsevier stocks instead.

Would be cool (and good for transparency) if they also publish all the internal communications leading to desk rejections :)

Factually correct #AcademicChatter

We like big beetles and we cannot lie! 👀🪲 Meet the biggest beetle in the world, Titanus giganteus - also known as the Titan beetle. Measuring up to 17cm long, this is one absolutely enormous beetle!

New #preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... www.linkedin.com/posts/claudi...

I am not so sure about ammonium hydroxide, but I think RM got it right and answer 1 is most likely more important than all the other points on the list.

Happy to have exactly 800 citations of my publications today! scholar.google.com/citations?vi... Despite pivoting from evolutionary genetics to livestock genetics a while ago 😊

Academia will form these little pockets -- people whose theorizing is outrageous & supported by methods outdated since the 90s -- but once it reaches a critical size those people just review each others papers & grants, form societies, hand out awards etc, like a self-contained parallel society.

Congratulations to Ian!