Mark Pallen

My book, The Essential Guide to Evolution, is now out and you can pick up a copy on Amazon: tinyurl.com/pallen-book

For those willing to provide an impactful review, happy to send you a review copy free of charge.

Please spread the word!

Hi Maya. Thanks for your interest. If you would like to know more, I have made some samples available from the book here: www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/2ecwj...
Hope you can access them okay?

My book, The Essential Guide to Evolution, is now out and you can pick up a copy on Amazon: tinyurl.com/pallen-book

For those willing to provide an impactful review, happy to send you a review copy free of charge.

Please spread the word!

YouTube video by Nightwish NIGHTWISH - The Greatest Show on Earth (with Richard Dawkins) (OFFICIAL LIVE)

Happy Darwin Day! This from @
nightwish will blow away any cobwebs. youtu.be/qrMwxe2ya5E

@profaliceroberts.bsky.social you in brum perchance tomorrow?

Well done! Their score of 345 trumps our highest score of 325 playing for @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social in 1995-6 championship

bsky.app/profile/quad...

Is there a “brain microbiome”? No - Quadram Institute There is no scientific evidence of a brain microbiome, including no imaging, DNA-sequence-based or culture-based or immunological evidence.

🆕 Blog! Our experts Prof @mjpallen.bsky.social Dr Falk Hildebrand @bioinf.bsky.social and Dr Aimee Parker explain that there is no evidence for a brain microbiome 🧠
https://buff.ly/40gVxNH

My latest letter to @theguardian.com

Jimmy Carter, oldest of all US presidents, dies aged 100 The Democrat served a single term as president, a late 1970s period of economic and diplomatic crises.

Sad news.

Jimmy Carter, former US president, dies aged 100 www.bbc.com/news/article...

Frustrating that he didn’t live long enough to outlive the guinea worm. But nearly gone now thanks to him and a tremendous team. www.cartercenter.org/resources/pd...

Donate here www.cartercenter.org

„Die gefährlichste Weltanschauung ist die derer, die die (mikrobielle) Welt nie angeschaut haben.“ Humboldt (fast)

Our letter was published. amp-theguardian-com.translate.goog/science/2024...

Stimmt. Danke! Interessant, dass ihr critical thinking aus dem Englischen übernehmt, während wir Weltanschauung aus dem Deutschen übernehmen. 😉

Gaza death trap: MSF report exposes Israel’s campaign of total destruction  | Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF ... Repeated Israeli military attacks on Palestinian civilians over the last 14 months, the dismantling of the health care system and other essential infrastructure, the suffocating siege, and the systema...

A ceasefire is needed now to save lives and move humanitarian aid into #Gaza.

Our latest report has the details: www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/gaza-death-t...

🤦🏻‍♂️🤷🏻

@theguardian.com has eventually published an edited version of our letter. www.theguardian.com/science/2024... @pathogenomenick.bsky.social but behaved disingenuously in adding a title we didn’t agree to. There is *no* evidence of a brain microbiome.

@theguardian.com still not addressed its unbalanced reporting on non existent brain microbiome (failure of substance) but now presenting failure of style with regressive reversion to online offering aping printed version rather than built for mobile devises. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Not claiming that pathogens cannot enter brain but that there is no resident normal commensal complex microbial community in the human brain.

@katharineviner.bsky.social please could you give us courtesy of a response to this letter? Or better still publish it in full and/or retract the unbalanced article to which it refers. I have been @theguardian.com reader all my adult life and it would be shame to have to break that habit over this!

@theguardian.com Could your editor please engage in the courtesy of a reply to our letter sent to you yesterday on this misleading article? You can see it has generated much interest here on BlueSky, but should reach your entire readership if you care about balanced and accurate reporting.

I have injected AI generated Socratic dialogues into PhD student training. Eg mmbdtp.github.io/modules/meta... Students said they were surprised how polite such discussions were—even though AI generated they reflect the tone of the originals.

Well we didn’t get a transcript of all that was said between the two of them so choice of emotionally charged quote is nonetheless a choice particularly without balanced coverage. But will see what guardian editor makes of it. I expect revisions. But isn’t it nice to have reasonable discussion here?

And any discussion of debates in Guardian article is unbalanced. Calling people dinosaurs? Is that really permissible in balanced scholarly discourse?

More clear I hope in revised version of the letter, where we refer specifically to the non-peer-revioewed study led by Lathe. Not sure whether by original article, you mean the Guardian piece or something referred to therein?

Revisiting this old paper journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1... which proposed the acronym YATM for "yet another typing method", might I suggest YALB1S pronounced yal-biss for "yet another low-biomass 16S study"?

No. The Hu et al study that Lathe is senior author on.

The consensus microbiome paper is far less troubling in that the door should be open to accepting unrecognised or under-recognised roles for microbes in neurological disease. But that is different from accepting a resident commensal microbiome in health. Term "microbiome" muddies the waters here.

Ah, we are talking at cross purposes. You are talking about the first paper cited, Lathe et al. and what you are seeing is the journal's copyright declaration. I was thinking about the Hu et al non-peer-reviewed preprint.

Infection Medicine Awarded Benter Foundation Grant for Dementia Research Research on the association of viral infections with dementia has been given a boost by the Benter Foundation.

You mean the Benter Foundation? Looks like the money was awarded for something else and this study involved repurposing funding or resources rather than Benter specifically supporting it through grant review scheme www.ed.ac.uk/infection-me...

I would have preferrred to cite Salter et al, but I don't think Guardian accepts scientific citations. But you are immortalised as the superhero of kitome science! What do you make of fish brain microbiome paper?