This unbalance puff piece for the horrific changes to funding in Aus is so fustrating. Change the whole funding system to cut our early and mid career innovation. www.smh.com.au/national/aus...

Vol 17, Iss 3 (2025) has dropped! Worth the wait, w/articles on sex/gender, ecology in context, Darwinizing Gaia, and theories in physiology. We love the diversity of articles that are sent to us—keep them coming! PTPBio is, as always, diamond #OpenAccess: completely free for authors and readers!

I still strongly think being specific about biodiversity measures is one of the best tools to fight government and business metric selection/ gerrymandering to hide biodiversity loss. theconversation.com/australia-cl...

Vale Paul Ehrlich. There is going to be some hot takes from people who don’t know shit outside of the book Population Bomb. Paul was critical for motivating biologists to be activists for life, Soule who started conservation bio was his grad student. He popularised the goal of ‘biodiversity’. 1/x

Some heated words through this! While not named, there is a solid reference to my recent paper on moral hazard and de-extinction in here, which was cool to see. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Four review requests in 48 hours from legitimate journals, one from a science journal, one general humanities, one philosophy, and one policy. All unfortunately relevant enough to me to be of interest.

Respect to Carlos but disappointed with this essay. 1) He cites a clear piece of activism uncontested (refuted by 25 leading Australian ecologists). theconversation.com/yes-feral-ca... 1/3

Given my recent work critiquing ecosystem services use in justifying invasive species and treating biodiversity as fungible economic tokens, I will be interested to read this.

Very cool to talk to Julian Morrow on this work. I have tried to give Colossal credit for the impressive breakthroughs they have made while being constructively critical. I have not listened to it but I was told it went well. www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

7news story on their insta. I come across as a little more negative than I am but that probably makes it more interesting for the viewer! Here’s the link to the story: www.instagram.com/reel/DUpNmuo...

Check out Sunday Extra this week on ABC radio for my interview with Julian Morrow on De-extinction!

I have enjoyed the absurdity of the fact that I have managed to cite the Joe Rogan Podcast in a top conservation journal and its follow up media piece. Not a citation i can say I ever expected having.

Some companies claim they can ‘resurrect’ species. Does that make people more comfortable with extinction? 🤔 Researchers from our ethics node at Macquarie University answer this question and more in a new study. Read about it in the @aunz.theconversation.com ⬇️ bit.ly/4kgUqHm #Ethics

"Some have argued the impact of introduced species has been overstated, and that introduced species should be seen as a legitimate part of Australia’s ecosystems. Scientific evidence and conservation outcomes do not support this." theconversation.com/yes-feral-ca... - @aunz.theconversation.com

It was an embarrassment that biosciences published that obvious piece of disinformation. Invasive species denialism is dangerous, and as someone in the humanities it is disappointing that there is so much support for it my section of the academia.

Who is the Big Tobacco of today? In new work, we find 50% of high profile social media papers are connected to big tech through funding, collaboration and employment. Most connections aren't disclosed. @jbakcoleman.bsky.social @jevinwest.bsky.social @carlbergstrom.com 1 arxiv.org/abs/2601.11507

If I were a foreign power doing "foreign interference" on a tiny fraction of Australian research projects, I wouldn't believe my luck that Australia's response was to extend grant time-scales to 16 months while failing to reverse its systematic decline in research funding. Talk about bang-for-buck!

I was fortunate to be there on that day 23 years ago! www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...

It is mad that you would give up this access to biotic resources. The surely should be an external funder given the potential uses of fungi biochemical pathways.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Worlds first empirical study of whether de-extinction can diminish the public’s commitment to stopping extinctions.

Only one awarded to all of philosophy. A complete reversal from the DP grants.

After doing 30 hours of Science a week at uni (mostly labs) in my first year I once considered pretending to faint and hit the corner of the table to get out of a biochem lab. Found out in 2nd yr sci you could do His&Phil sci and write conceptual papers with no labs. Rolled on from there to here.

New on the Archive: Lean, Christopher and Latham, Andrew and Sandrussi, Annie and Rogers, Wendy (2025) De-extinction and the risk of moral hazard. [Preprint] https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/27257/

After over 10 years of speculation that de-extinction would create a moral hazard we have done the first study as to whether it will. Very happy with how it turned out and to have my 5th publication this year. philarchive.org/rec/LEADAT

Save the CSIRO Our national science & research agency is now facing more job cuts than under Tony Abbott Call on the Albanese Govt to fund the scientists & research we need to tackle big issues we face from climate to food security and everything in between www.davidpocock.com.au/save_our_csiro

Lots in the news about libs abandoning net zero but the new labor environment policys are as bad if not worse. Thankfully Lisa Cox has been on top of explaining this to the public. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Happy to be out of Sydney and in the country. Going to my cousins wedding in Tamworth. Funnily the family sheep farm is in Manilla, a small town that has birthed two great Australian philosophers. Kim Sterelny and Mark Colyvan. I think the local pub could do with a plaque to Australia Phil Bio.

My recent work has expressed concern about biodiversity offsetting. The real world context for this is how the Aus laws (see here) have folded in the face of hard choices, fostered old-growth deforestation, and inspired de-X companies to want to emulate biodiversity offsetting on the genomic level.

I contributed to the following paper which has already stirred some interest on reddit. I will explain how I think about it and why I wanted to help. I see this paper as a pedagogical tool for those who actively manage animals. www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...

Okay, here are some first reflections on Watson. Watson's life is a tragedy, really of Shakespearean proportions. He did not, as most bios will tell you, do one great thing when he was young and then collect laurels for it for the next 60 years. His career arc was unlike any in science.

Big news in conservation biotech and a significant consolidation of the major players. Viagen has been a lot quieter in its public persona, but has a clearer income model, selling cloned pets to the rich. www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...

I am incredibly honoured to give the 2025 Alan Saunders Lecture for the Australasian Association of Philosophy with Kate Lynch. Broadcast tonight. aap.org.au/alansaunders... I have also written up some notes and citations for it. christopherhlean.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/...

I am giving a short online overview of my recent paper, next week. Expect me to be unimpressed with new conservation, compassionate conservation, the multispecies justice movement, and others defending invasive species. Register here: cassyni.com/events/GXDbo...

Last month our Centre's Ethics node at Macquarie University hosted the CoESB 2025 Annual Workshop for Capabilities 2: Industrial Translation and 3: Social Dimensions. The workshop focused on risk, climate change and synthetic biology, and transitions to the bioeconomy. 👉 Read more: bit.ly/4mH9gXm

I am giving a short online overview of my recent paper, next week. Expect me to be unimpressed with new conservation, compassionate conservation, the multispecies justice movement, and others defending invasive species. Register here: cassyni.com/events/GXDbo...

We’re excited to launch the official BlueSky profile of ISHPSSB! Founded in 1998, we connect researchers in philosophy, history, and social studies of biology and medicine worldwide. Follow us for updates and events! #PhilosophyOfBiology, #HistoryOfScience, #STS, #Biology, #Medicine

Cool paper on ecological function from Clark. I find it plausible there is some consilience between the entities identified by function theories, whether these ground a unified normativity I am unsure but will be interested to see how the literature moves from this point. philpapers.org/rec/CLAWTL-2

Being an academic vagrant (post doc) means spending too much time struggling to access academic journals. Each time a change of Uni, a new email and no access to the old one. I probably get a heap of paper sent to review that I never see.

#ishpssb next session (11-12.30) room BLB5. Jay Odenbaugh, Mark Bedau, and me as the last talk. Stacked session on issues in ecology and synthetic biology. You will regret not seeing it.

Shannon's H, Simpson's D, and Pielou's J are useless in ecology. Fitting data with a compound abundance distribution based on the geometric series is a better way to quantify variation – and to estimate species richness. New paper in Ecology Letters. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Arrived in Lisbon after 24 hours from lift off in Sydney. Tomorrow in Porto for #ISHPSSB2025. Looking forward to catching up with everyone and seeing what is new in Phil bio.

3-year Postdoc in philosophy of biology w/ @lucielaplane.bsky.social in Paris on cell lineages; interdisciplinary project w/ mathematicians & biologists. Conceptually-minded historians & social scientists also welcome to apply. Project start in early 2026. Application opens soon #HPS #hpbio #STS

New #ISHPSSB schedule out. I am now speaking on the Friday in the second session: ‘Scientific, Social, and Ethical Facets of Complex Biological Systems’. virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/73530/...

A powerful, persuasive, emotional & evidence-based rebuttal to Wallach & Lundgren’s claims, from Professor John Woinarski. My own view, it’s essential for science to challenge dogma, but if this is not done in a robust way, using weight of evidence, it is reckless & potentially harmful. #ICCB2025

Very excited about the Call for Papers for the upcoming 2025 conference for the Australasian Association for History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science. Come join us in sunny Brisbane QLD this December!! It is always a wonderful event. #hps #histSTM #philsci #STS #metasci 🧪

Check out our latest issue with some outstanding papers from outstanding authors! As always, we are fully #openaccess, free for both authors and readers. 🌱🐋 🌎 journals.publishing.umich.edu/ptpbio/issue...

I have been presenting this paper for over 5 years (as ecological neoliberalism) so I am happy to finally have written it and had it get through (still preprint). I will add some thoughts below. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

New piece just out - Who benefits? Are smartphones parasites? theconversation.com/your-smartph...

Explicit value trade-offs in conservation: integrating animal welfare: Trends in Ecology & Evolution www.cell.com/trends/ecolo... Was lucky to contribute to this. Too much of conservation involves pretending differing interests will always result in win-win scenarios. It doesn’t.