It's the anniversary of Alexander Fleming returning from summer break & finding his Staph. aureus culture plate had been left open with mold growing on it that killed bacteria. Let's focus on what came next: how do we go from an agar plate in 1928 to 2.3 million doses ready on D-Day, June 1944?

Reading tributes to Dr. Darren Markland and am verklempt by how many of you he touched by telling the truth. “It was public criticism of power that only an intensive-care doctor doing the hard work during the pandemic could fling about without being fired.” edifyedmonton.com/urban/innova...

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

I and other participants of the Novel Approaches to Preventing Publication Bias Workshop, hosted by the NINDS Office of Research Quality in May 2024, have published a framework to encourage the publication of null results in science: 🧪 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Hillary Clinton: "When I hear people like Kennedy talking about getting back to a time where we aren't vaccinating, we're drinking raw milk - yeah, & people didn't live! I mean, this is so crazy, it's so wrongheaded, it's so shortsighted and it's going to cause deaths... it already is costing lives"

Remember: If we allow ourselves to fall into fatalism, or wallow in disappointment, or become resigned to what is rather than what should be, we will lose the long game. The greatest enemy of positive social change is cynicism about what can be changed.

Yep. I am looking at you, liquid handling robots.

The New York Times piece today about US science is terrible and wrong—in many ways. I could write a whole article about this, but as one example: “To close observers, the original crisis began well before any of this…” No. I’m a close observer of science, and this is incorrect.

Yet again, machine learning — even gussied up via the transformer architecture — encodes and reinforces societal biases. This study reveals that LLM-based peer review relies heavily on author institution in its decisions. arxiv.org/abs/2509.15122

Vote with your dollars.

Call for Applications WashU School of Public Health Faculty at All Levels The Washington University School of Public Health is seeking outstanding faculty at all levels See call for list of areas where applications are particularly encouraged apply.interfolio.com/173629

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits." www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

AI psychosis is now a “thing” - between this, misinformation, online radicalization and identity fusion (where a social cause, political stance or strongly held view becomes deeply intertwined with your identity), we really are racing towards our own demise as a species. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

David Rose, the police officer and Afghanistan veteran with a wife and 2 small children, was murdered by a white, right wing extremist man a month ago over antivaccine conspiracies pushed by RFK Jr. and this administration. He did not get recognition from political leaders or even much news coverage

Love this new paper from @gtrubl.bsky.social and @alexjprobst.bsky.social on the importance of accurate use of terminology in microbial ecology. I’ve seen a lot of use of lysogenic instead of temperate recently so it’s nice to see that distinction being made. doi.org/10.1111/1462...

Also, as always, 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing != metagenomics

Earlier this year, ProPublica found that the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations increased by more than 50% under Texas’ abortion ban. Here’s how we did our analysis. (Published Feb. 2025)

From a recent trip to Gateway Arch, wondering if it survives.

This moment is disturbing even in the mundane: I’ve started taking screenshots of historical sources I’m using in research from the national park service, the smithsonian, and the national archives, just in case they get taken down. It’s now a part of my process and takes time I have to plan for.

I have gotten a bit behind at sharing the lab’s latest work - this paper is now published - check it out! www.cell.com/cell-reports... Long story short: insulin is the major determinant of female fat storage, with a relatively minor effect on males.

Great thread. Vaccine protects you beyond just infectious diseases, and can lower risks of heart attacks and dementia.

With the viral season upon us, the debate over vaccination will flare up again. It remains strange to watch: the advantages are many, well established, and increasingly better supported by evidence, including benefits against non-communicable diseases. 1/10

of the influenza vaccine is low (against infection). What is forgotten is the protection from non-communicable diseases. What if you could reduce your risk to heart disease by 40%? What is you could reduce you risk to dementia by at least 10%? That is what vaccines do! 3/10

I like this. Since under RFK Jr, Covid shots are now for people with underlying conditions that put them at risk, Michigan’s chief medical executive Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian states that not having the most recent Covid shot constitutes such an underlying condition. www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/inside...

Two babies have died of Whooping cough in Louisiana, a vaccine preventable disease. All pregnant patients and their families should be vaccinated to protect the newborn. This is Louisiana's worst Whooping cough (pertussis) outbreak in 30 years. buff.ly/pez25q3 #medsky #pedsky🛟😷

Not good: www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...

These are terrifying times. Corporate media is caving utterly. Support non-profit media, public media, local media, and the last few old MSM companies with good owners. We tick at least two of those boxes and so if you value our reporting, you can give here secure.motherjones.com/flex/mj/key/...

www.cell.com/cell/abstrac... A host organelle (in sea slugs) integrates stolen chloroplasts for animal photosynthesis

Ousted CDC director Susan Monarez told senators that she was fired for “holding the line on scientific integrity.”

It is not the first time such on-the-nose grief has been observed in this endangered population. In January, orca J35 carried a dead baby for at least five days. J35 had previously made world headlines in 2018 when she carried her dead calf for 17 days and 1,000 miles. From @kuow.org

In tenure letters the last few years I've been forcibly struck by how much service the women I'm reviewing are doing compared to the men. (Actual evidence backs this anecdote up - see below.) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Before Terry Fox became a household name he was a science student at @sfu.ca. Join Team Science this Thursday Sept 18 at 12:30pm for the SFU #TerryFoxRun to help us celebrate his legacy and raise funds for life-saving cancer research! run.terryfox.ca/team/science...

If you are UK-based and working on any aspect of microbiomes (human, plant, insect, soil, animal, ...), please do sign up to Microbiome-Net for details of networking, funding and training opportunities. forms.office.com/pages/respon...

Acute necrotizing encephalopathy is a rare but incredibly serious complication of infections like flu & covid. It often causes severe disability or death. Please get your kids their covid & flu vaccines; the families reported on in this story have to live w/ regret. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/h...

News from Finland. A 9-year-old lost an especially good stick he’d had since he was 2. He hung up 20 posters. A few days later it was returned. It had been found by a 2-year-old, who wanted to keep it for herself, but her mother made her return it. She got toys, flowers and candy as a reward.

The landscape of microbial associations in human cancer www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... TLDR -- most cancers do not have microbiomes...but a few do have consistent microbe associations (i.e., colorectal and oral cancers). Make sense!

Bioactive molecules unearthed by terabase-scale long-read sequencing of a soil metagenome - @rockefelleruniv.bsky.social go.nature.com/4606ozA

MDPI has updated the withdrawal notice to read "This preprint has unresolved ethical issues concerning ethical oversight, legitimacy of institutional boards, validity of the study design, and potential biases in study interpretation that compromise the overall trust in the research findings."

Gift article — Yes @mark-carney.bsky.social we need you to invest in medical research so we can keep each of these (formerly joint US-Can) #cancer trials going. It’s measly money, tiny amount. #cdnpoli #onpoli www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/7b0c022...

Long measles. When I started teaching pathophysiology, I was surprised how many viral infections had rare bit severe effects years or decades later.

Excited to share our @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social led by Magda showing how Bif has co-evolved with different animal hosts 🐒🐭🐷🐦 Key takeaways: 🔹 Host ancestry + diet shape Bif evolution 🔹 Mammals enriched for carb-busting enzymes 🔹 Untapped diversity in non-human hosts = new probiotic potential

View the agenda for the Julian Davies Memorial Symposium!: tinyurl.com/yvhf37vy Please complete this form by September 15 to register to attend: tinyurl.com/4zvpu6t2

after a long effort, gathering a lot of input from many people, we finaly put it all together: Ten Common Misconceptions About Galaxy (and Why They Are Wrong!) https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202509.0823 Thank you very much to all people involved !

A multi-omics recovery factor predicts long COVID in the IMPACC study @jclinical-invest.bsky.social @ggabernet.bsky.social @skleinstein.bsky.social @yalemedicine.bsky.social www.jci.org/articles/vie...

🦠📉A comprehensive model quantifying virus killing of bacteria based on bacterial population dynamics! Curious to see how it aligns with our simple model (Fig. 5) 👉 www.cell.com/cell-genomic... Bacterial density+dilution events strongly impact CRISPR immunity updates!! @mikeblazanin.bsky.social 🧪

Postdoc position available - pls share- to investigate molecular mechanisms of protein homeostasis during S. during infection. Send a CV, list of publications, and a statement about why you would like to join the laboratory. Eduardo Groisman Yale Med [email protected]

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

How to talk to strangers at a bar about Covid | STAT www.statnews.com/2025/09/06/c...