In case you thought they just meant undocumented immigrants…

The other aspect of this story is, academics and NHS staff could and would have done this better and essentially for free if they were given the same data access as Faculty, but they are not allowed it. Government policy is deliberately to frustrate pro bono / non-profit health data research.

Every week, Nature publishes yet another breathless puff piece about some AI startup, based only unpublished claims from the company and interviewing only those who work there. How can the leading scientific journal publish piece after piece that would make Kevin Roose blush? I think it's that...

💡 Support mstdn.science with a Financial Contribution! 💡 mstdn.science exists through contributions by folks like you. If you're not skint from the season's festivities, consider making a regular contribution to https://opencollective.com/mstdnscience . If we can manage another £80 / month, the […]

An interesting open dataset dropped this month with very accurate footprints of almost every building on Earth, and also critically, the heights of the buildings, so they can be extruded into 3D. Interactive map: tubvsig-so2sat-vm1.srv.mwn.de Paper: essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...

Season's greetings from all of us at New Phytologist and The New Phytologist Foundation!

We’ve today formally written to multiple public bodies about BBC reporting on transgender people. Here’s who we’ve contacted and why. 1/6

"Exceptional young performers reached their peak quickly but narrowly mastered only one interest (e.g., one sport). By contrast, exceptional adults reached peak performance gradually with broader, multidisciplinary practice. However, elite programs are designed to nurture younger talent."

It's Open Access! if you want a break from binge-watching series during this festive season...

Truly, all of this. Academic careers are contingency piled on contingency and while you can certainly improve and worsen your odds at any given stage, attempting to reconstruct what makes a "good" faculty member from the people who make it to tenure is building stories around survivorship biases

It's not just me that says that our social web should be connected by RSS. Cory Doctorow said it. Molly White said it. And last week Ben Werdmuller said it. If they all did it, we'd have all the freedom we could ever want. So what's holding it up? Links in first reply.

Stopping immigration won’t return you to a wonderful past, but it might deprive you of a wonderful future.

Hiring: Group Leader in Microbiome Studies! ✨ The successful candidate would establish & lead a new research group in human microbiome science, advancing understanding of microbe-microbe and microbe-host interactions in health & disease. Apply by 22 Dec. www.ndorms.ox.ac.uk/jobs/kennedy...

I am still actively looking for postdoc positions — please lmk if you (or your friends and colleagues) need a hardworking postdoc with field, lab, and bioinformatic skills! I am broadly interested in evolution in the ocean, conservation and population genetics, and rapid evolution.

New Home Office impact assessment finds that cutting skilled and social care visas will cost the UK up to £10 billion with a central estimate of -£5.4 billion. It would be good if this got even a fraction of the coverage devoted to the endless debate about boats, flags and Turkish barber shops

Double success as #LivUni researchers receive highly competitive #ERC Consolidator Grants! These grants support academics pursue ground-breaking ideas and help push new boundaries in science 🔬 👏 Congratulations Prof Brianna Heazelwood and Dr Ceren Kabukcu 👉 news.liverpool.ac.uk/2025/12/09/d...

"Dual nationals should be stripped of their citizenship, and they should be deported with no exceptions. We don’t want these people in our country. If they have citizenship of another country, then they should be deported, and their British citizenship should be removed. No ifs, no buts." Oh dear.

1/ ❓ Have inequalities in childhood pneumococcal conjugate vaccine uptake in England narrowed or widened after a change from a 2+1 to 1+1 schedule? 🧪 #IDSky #EpiSky 🔗 See our preprint👇 ✍️ Authors: Praise Ilechukwu | Daniel Hungerford | Neil French | Edward Hill 💻 Code: github.com/aaliswalker/...

Oops! All Tommy Wiseaus

💾 ABRicate 1.2.0 has been released! This 'oversight' lasted 6 years, but with help from @finlaym.bsky.social we got CI working and updated all the databases. #bioconda #conda #bioinformatics #microbiology #genomics github.com/tseemann/abr...

We are deeply saddened to share the passing of Amos Bairoch, pioneer of bioinformatics and co-founder of SIB. His lifelong commitment for high-quality, open data transformed global research. We honour his legacy by continuing to build the future of bioinformatics.

I'm sure that will work.

Lots of people sharing this clip because it's funny and cathartic but I also genuinely believe it's important. We have to win the narrative battle between "I live in a corrupt society and that's just how it is" and "I live in a corrupt society and we are going to defeat and humiliate these ghouls."

"Chomsky had deeper ties with Epstein than previously known, documents reveal" "The philosopher and the sex trafficker were in contact long after Epstein was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor, documents reveal"

Journalist challenge: Use “Machine Learning” when you mean machine learning and “LLM” when you mean LLM. Ditch “AI” as a catch-all term, it’s not useful for readers and it helps companies trying to confuse the public by obscuring the roles played by different technologies. 🧪

When I commented about this on a feedback form, I was scolded for not checking the "disability" option on my application. In the UK, "disability" has a legal definition and many conditions (surgery, damaged bones or nerves, age) don't qualify www.gov.uk/definition-o...

Finally, people with mobility issues or pain don’t want to make a fuss. They might still be able to walk, just not stairs or long detours. But they don’t want to chase organizers to ask “Is there a step-free way to the bathroom?” Good accessibility means they don’t have to ask.

I’m howling.

Happy to share our new AMR resource which has phenotypic AMR (usually MIC data) collected from publications and databases. This is paired with assemblies and annotations We're excited for users who might train new models, find phenotype/genotype mismatches, or any other use

the only real way to think about these raids is terrorist attacks

people are actually very susceptible to just-so stories about human origins because listening to bullshit helped us survive on the savanna

This is a fantastic article about James Watson but mostly it’s master class in dispatching of ghouls in science. Often the problem isn’t just that they’re amoral but that their being a(im)moral makes them dangerously wrong in ways that have cascading externalities on our understanding.

This raises what I like to call the "AI test for tasks". If many people use AI to do task X, then that tells you that task X is actually just a brainless administrative exercise. Any such task should probably be eliminated, and if that's not an option, modified to make automation even easier.

Jay Bhattacharya's plan for a new pandemic is for everyone to suddenly be healthy.

This, right here. The best predictor of productivity is funding the damn grant.

Congratulations to @zaminiqbal.bsky.social from @milnerevolution.bsky.social on being awarded the 2026 Mary Lyon Medal!

Folks been asking for a searchable catalogue for microbinfie podcast. With a 147 episodes, and 78+ guests its getting hard to find episodes of your interest. anyway, i wrote a catalogue https://www.happykhan.com/microbinfie see all our lovely guests at https://www.happykhan.com/microbinfie/guests

Yep - The problem is that these can be self-fulfilling prophecies. If you have a group of super-talented people and select one person to give better opportunities to and they do really well, it could be that you are good at talent spotting or just that people do better with more resources...

For-profit journals are supposed to improve research quality, yet they're perversely incentivized to churn out whatever they can monetize. This was happening before AI (see Strain: bit.ly/43gJPUM), and AI will make it worse. It's insane that we volunteer our time to help them do so. 4/n

If you pick up an old shell, can you hear the C?

Heroic work by @bluebirdsjunk.bsky.social in pulling this mammoth study together 'Staphylococcus haemolyticus Population Genomics Provides Insights into Pathogenicity and Commensalism' www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Last chance to register for Understanding and predicting microbial evolutionary dynamics 2025 in Liverpool, UK. Register today by 23:59 GMT: microb.io/MicroEvo25 #MicroEvo25

I like this obit better...

I wrote a review of James Watson's obituary by CSHL: liorpachter.wordpress.com/2025/11/08/r...

When people celebrate the individual genius of folks in science, they should also mourn the collective loss of genius of folks who were actively discouraged or disadvantaged from a career in science because of the same person(s)

I've had such a crap commute this morning, that I've written to my MP and Councillor. I'm just a bloke trying to get to work, and I want to go home to my kids at the end of the day. Our road culture is fundamentally broken. cc @liamthorp.bsky.social

Make phrenology great again

Well, this is bloody depressing. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...