Back to work next week after 7 months maternity leave. I'm both excited to return to a job I love and worked hard to get. But dreading it: how am I going to manage a tough academic career and two wonderful babies? How did you academic mamas do it?

"faster, reproducible science across disciplines through UKRI‑supported national AI testbeds and shared methods" Forgive me for expressing scepticism that AI will magically fix the reproducibility crisis.

"Here, we show that this Ab appears to be unreliable due to providing false-positive signals at the expected molecular weight of Bax in immunoblotting experiments and likewise provides false-positive signals in immunofluorescence-based detection of Bax expression" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Openness means more than access. That's why we encourage submissions of Replication Studies. Learn about publishing your replication study with us in our author guide: buff.ly/rcI0oAY

Measles is one of those nightmare diseases that, if it hadn't been killing people for hundreds of years, people would ABSOLUTELY be pushing conspiracy theories about right now. It's too nasty in too many different directions to seem natural. But oh, boy, it sure is.

First-rate analysis. Strong agree that ‘someone needs to own disciplinary health’ . At present, a fatal flaw of the UK system, centred in England on the separation of functions between DfE (and OfS) and DSIT, is that no one does.

"Science — especially curiosity-driven research — is, at its heart, a creative act. It needs space to breathe and the capacity to fail. Often, government-mandated programmes lack that flexibility" .

www.nature.com/articles/d41... Excellent summary by @prof-tregoning.bsky.social @natureportfolio.nature.com @ukri.org

Also: shifting scientific funding towards "government priority areas" is a surefire way to kill creativity and innovation. Generating scientific knowledge is not like ordering a takeaway. You can't just tick the 'science' that you want and expect anything useful.

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

As the political climate around animal research becomes less supportive in the UK, it is our interest to argue for & protect organismal biology. BBSRC opened a survey, which gives us a timely platform. Please fill & share link among colleagues. Deadline: 9/2 engagementhub.ukri.org/mrc-bbsrc/la...

Last week, RPN broke a string of stories on significant changes to funding across a number of research councils (see thread below) This morning, UKRI chief executive is appearing at the Commons science committee, where he is being asked about them by MPs Here are some key moments so far 🧵

One more reason my soul shrivels up every time I hear someone say "I just used chatgpt to ____"

That would be catastrophic

Sending babies to nursery completely reshapes their microbiomes. Socializing at a young age helps to develop greater diversity in children’s microbiota, according to an analysis of baby-to-baby transmission of gut bacteria. 🧪👶🦠 #medsky @medsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Measles can be fatal. Do you know its symptoms? 🔴 Rash that starts on the face and spreads over the body 🔴 Fever 🔴 Cough 🔴 Red and watery eyes 🔴 Small white spots inside the cheeks Seek health care if you suspect you or your child has measles. 🔗bit.ly/4iq4nkD

Honored to share our new paper, Osteoarthritis as a Systemic Disease, in @natrevrheum.nature.com, out today: rdcu.be/eSXLW - thanks to Ida Haugen, @tuhinaneogi.bsky.social and @farsh-g.bsky.social for your input on gaps and opportunities.

Merry Xmas everyone!!!

I can't resist posting this picture of my beautiful 6 days-old angels 😍😍😍😍. Maternity life! Their first hug since being separated at birth for NICU treatment

I am very happy to announce that maternity has now officially started with the premature birth of my 2 beautiful girls. 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

1) Despite the chaos, I am very pleased to present the terrific research conducted by my post-doc @clarissacoveney.bsky.social. acrjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

On the responsibilities of intellectuals and the rise of bullsh*t jobs in universities. "Corporate academia is subverting academic life. It’s destroying academia from within." 🧪👩🏼‍🎓 academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

Excited to share our work on the small but mighty microRNA-126-3p in @naturecomms.bsky.social! We found this microRNA is elevated in four knee osteoarthritis cohorts and show in an animal model that it reduces the severity of knee osteoarthritis - at least in part via angiogenesis. rdcu.be/ebycj

In light of the major cutbacks at universities - especially in the arts, humanities and social sciences - we have written to the Chancellor to make the case for investing in research and higher education through the Spending Review www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/56...

1. A thread about the value of doing "slow science": When I was in grad school I heard this (likely apocryphal) story about one of my favourite scientists: Barbara McClintock.

I’ve seen some posts recently, about the value of basic research, in light of funding cuts and demands that research have immediate economic justification. Let me collect some info here, in a thread, about why it’s a bad idea to attach those sorts of demands to funding. 🧵 🧪 ⚛️

We should push back at AI's resource extractivism in ways that go beyond environmentalism. My article out tomorrow on computerweekly.com ("Labour’s AI Action Plan - a gift to the far right") joins the dots between AI's environmental harms, social harms, and entanglement with far right ideologies.

Our paper on nurturing a #PositiveResearchCulture within your #research #team published by @wellcometrust.bsky.social gives useful tips for your lab. As well as making you a good team leader, nurturing culture pays off in building your science: 1/11 wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/9-3...

New MRC application submitted! Thank you to my wonderful co-applicants. I can't wait to work with you all! @clarkinbonebiol.bsky.social @sarahsnelling.bsky.social Katherine Staines, Ruby Chang and Alessandra Carriero.

Expert's Dilemma: the more specialized you become, the less open you are to creative solutions from other fields. But the more you explore other fields, the more you risk losing credibility in your home field. Interdisciplinary work is still not really embraced by academia.

I have been preparing a grant application for the last month (yes, over xmas), submission due this week. I have now spent almost 3 days just reducing the number of words to fit the strict 2,800 word limit.. kind of feels like a massive waste of time.

Women in the U.S. experience a higher prevalence than men of many chronic conditions, but research has yet to fully explain these differences. Our recent report examines how to advance research on chronic conditions in women: https://buff.ly/3VV1gaG

If you send me an invitation to review on Dec 24 and a "reminder" on Dec 25, there's a chance I won't even try to come up with alternative reviewers after clicking "Decline"...

Merry Xmas everyone!!

Women leave academia at higher rates than men at every career stage, and attrition is especially high among three groups: tenured faculty, women in non-STEM fields, and women employed at less prestigious institutions, a #ScienceAdvances analysis finds.

My peer review of peer review: 1. "Community standards" typically devolve rapidly into stock critiques. 2. I don't think it's a "dialog" when one participant has a gun to the other's head. 3. The cost of wasted time due to silly revision experiments is very high and not a good use of research $$.

A small piece every day, keeps Type2Diabetes and weight gain away. I am so very pleased with my taste for dark chocolate after-dinner ☕! www.bmj.com/content/387/...

Different menopausal hormone therapies significantly affect cardiovascular disease risk, with tibolone linked to higher heart-related complications. by Johansson T, Karlsson T (...) Johansson Å et 5 al. in BMJ #MedSky 📖 read the article: https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2023-078784

If you're interested in the extracellular matrix of soft tissues and the role ECM plays in osteoarthritis then this systematic review is for you! boneandjoint.org.uk/Article/10.1...

One of the most surprising lessons for me during my 30 years of doing science is how it's essentially impossible predict what major scientific breakthroughs will emerge or where they will emerge from. But the way we fund science is mostly based on the assumption that we can make such predictions.

#WomensHealth research has historically been underfunded and overlooked. Learn about our new report reviewing the state of women’s health research and assessing funding needs at @NIH on December 5: https://buff.ly/3ZBKluP

Today I argue that the fusion of Big Tech and politics in the Tony Blair Institute is causing trouble for both The Royal Society and Keir Starmer.

Seen this many times. But many academics will never understand this or will just pretend they don't understand this. They'd rather train PhD students to be machines.

"Fecal microbial load is a major confounder in microbiome studies." Fecal microbial load is a major determinant of gut microbiome variation and a confounder for disease associations. #Cell @cellpress.bsky.social Open Access www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Reading the paper in Cell about how to close the scissor plots in gender representation at senior academic positions, I feel just a touch of pessimism. Having reached a level of seniority (middle management) I didn’t think I ever would, I read these great ideas wanting more, much more /1.

"Bumblebee population increases 116 times over in 'remarkable' Scotland rewilding project." Read that again: **116** times. Why are we STILL having to argue the case for rewilding?? www.scotsman.com/hays-way/bum...

🧪 #RNASky #RNABiology Our paper is now on bioRxiv. A short thread. This is the work of 2 former students (& me) - Sandipan dasgupta and Anand Ravi The whole project originated more than a decade ago during my postdoc days. I found that mRNAs can transfer between mammalian cells, not by exosomes>>

If you haven't seen this, an interesting analysis (uk based) peerj.com/articles/989/

More info on DRG neuron toxicity from AAV treatment www.cell.com/molecular-th...