naturepoker

That is tough - demanding publication record in the early career/program application stage is simply pushing for corruption, not excellence.

Ah of course, but in this case I'm specifically thinking about the ones mentioned in the recent PNAS paper, via deliberate involvement with/purchase of paper mill services.

Exponential Growth, Ephemeral & Unsustainable by Roberto — A few months ago, this idea dawned on me: I should write a series of posts on population dynamics. By no means a formal quantitative treatment of the subject. In its stead, a subjective i...

schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2...
#MicroSky

Idea of broken incentives leading to academic fraud is fascinating.

1-Is academic training incapable of filtering out people who produce knowledge/behave ethically only when forced?

2-PhD is treated as a path to higher quality of life, like a vocational program, to more people than we would think.

A do-or-die moment for the scientific enterprise Reflecting on our paper “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly”

Today, our article "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly" is finally published in PNAS. I hope that it proves to be a wake-up-call for the whole scientific community.

reeserichardson.blog/2025/08/04/a...

Postdoctoral Researcher of Metabolic Research Group Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis (LIOS) - the leading drug discovery centre in the Baltic countries is offering One permanent position of principal investigator /PostDoc of Metabolic Research Gr...

Please RT, two open postdoc positions in my metabolic research group:

euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/358375
euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/358370

Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds A statistical analysis found that the number of fake journal articles being churned out by “paper mills” is doubling every year and a half.

Not surprised to read this. I think the issue here is more researchers willing to commit fraud (by associating with/buying paper mill content) than ever before. Is this really just about existing incentive structure though?

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/s...

Nordic countries hit by ‘truly unprecedented’ heatwave | Climate crisis | The Guardian Scientists record longest streak of temperatures higher than 30C in region in records going back to 1961

"A weather station in the Norwegian part of the Arctic Circle recorded temperatures above 30C (86F) on 13 days in July." www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Makes me think about parts covering geography and speciation I've seen in more macro scale evolutionary biology courses. What about electrostatic separation of initial liquid application of culture on a plate, to induce a genotypic isolation?

며칠에 걸쳐 키위 하나를 먹어치우고 있는 다람쥐

I don't necessarily agree with Adam Curtis' outlook of how the modern world came to be, but his arguments are fascinating. He views contemporary society as result of faith in systems - the structures of power is accepted as inevitable result of underlying natural laws rather than human actions.

Outreach and Engagement Grant Eligible members can apply for up to £1000 to support relevant science outreach or public engagement initiatives that engage new audiences in the art and science in any aspect of microbiology.…

Applications for Outreach and Engagement grant are now open. Eligible members can apply for up to £1000 to support science outreach or public engagement initiatives. Check your eligibility and apply before 01 Oct 25 at 23.59 BST. microb.io/OutreachandE....

Critics of de-extinction research hit by mystery smear campaign Several researchers who have been critical of Colossal Biosciences’ plans to revive extinct animals say they have been targeted by online articles trying to discredit them

Nice folks, these de-extinction advocates...

BTW, I was recently at an event with Nic Rawlence where we debated Andrew Pask + Mike Archer about their attempt to "de-extinct" the Thylacine

The recording can be viewed here: echo360.net.au/media/8ccd63...

www.newscientist.com/article/2490...

GitHub - lh3/longdust: Identify long STRs, VNTRs, satellite DNA and other low-complexity regions in a genome Identify long STRs, VNTRs, satellite DNA and other low-complexity regions in a genome - lh3/longdust

Fun new tool from Heng Li. Thinking maybe I can use this to help find plasmid replication gene correlated repeat regions - though he specifically mentions it's not for tandem repeat regions. Hmm. 🖥️🧬

github.com/lh3/longdust

WitChi: Efficient Detection and Pruning of Compositional Bias in Phylogenomic Alignments Using Empirical Chi-Squared Testing Convergent evolution, where unrelated taxa independently evolve similar nucleotide or amino acid compositions, can introduce compositional bias into biological sequence data. Such biases distort phylo...

1.
🧵 New preprint out!
WitChi: a fast, open-source Python tool to detect, quantify & prune compositional bias in MSAs.
Lightweight, tree-free, scalable to 5k+ taxa... so we applied it to the GTDB archaea MSA.
#ArchaeaSky #MEvoSky #MicroSky
🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025...
💻 github.com/stephkoest/w...

Look at this wiggly little guy.

That annoying moment when 3 out of 10 subsampled assemblies are just 7 bases off from the rest.

Just enough to need an up-close look at the alignments, but also enough to make me go 'hmm'.

Manipulation of the nucleotide pool in human, bacterial and plant immunity - Nature Reviews Immunology Modification of the nucleotide pool is emerging as key to innate immunity in animals, plants and bacteria. This Review explains how immune pathways conserved from bacteria to humans manipulate the nuc...

We wrote a review on the free nucleotide pool as a central playground in human, bacterial, and plant immunity – now out in Nature Reviews in Immunology

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Was fun to write this piece with Dina Hochhauser!

Here is a thread to explain the premises

1/

Got the names of my next three centrifuges right here

Hmm. 79C GPU temperature during r10 methylation & basecalling. Background lab temperature is about 90~93F (32~34C) so the makeshift ventilation & cooling solution for the workstation is surprisingly well.

One more sequencing run until I have a full gamut of the target #Archaea species. Woot!

A Phylogenetic Host‐Range Index Reveals Ecological Constraints in Phage Specialisation and Virulence Phages are typically known for having a limited host range, targeting particular strains within a bacterial species, but accurately measuring their specificity remains challenging. Factors like the g...

After many years in the making, here is our host range #phage paper with #ecology, #evolution and #biocontrol perspectives published in Molecular Ecology! @phimresearch.bsky.social‬ @inrae-pv.bsky.social‬ #PVBMT #JulianGarneau onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
These are our key findings:

I'm so wiped guys. I just want to sit down, drink some beet juice and watch videos of funny dogs.

The necessity for authentication of ancient DNA from archaeological artefacts

url.au.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/6eR1CVARMk...

chirico cuvie, main character of armored trooper votoms, stands facing the viewer in his scopedog suit. behind him is a rusted-out factory and in front of him is a wasteland littered with scrap metal. at the bottom of the screen, the subtitle reads "But I'm just a man, and my battle in this hell continues."

speak on it, brother

Occurrence and temporal dynamics of denitrifying protist endosymbionts in the wastewater microbiome Effective wastewater treatment is of critical importance for preserving public health and protecting natural environments. Key processes in wastewater treatment, such as denitrification, are performed...

Occurrence and temporal dynamics of denitrifying protist endosymbionts in the wastewater microbiome.

Very excited to see the preprint of this story online and big congrats to @louison-nicolas.bsky.social at @mpimarinemicrobio.bsky.social!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Widespread misidentification of scanning electron microscope instruments in the peer-reviewed materials science and engineering literature Materials science and engineering (MSE) research has, for the most part, escaped the doubts raised about the reliability of the scientific literature by recent large-scale replication studies in psych...

New study @reeserichardson.bsky.social dropped:
Widespread misidentification of scanning electron microscope instruments in the peer-reviewed materials science and engineering literature

When descriptions in the Methods do not match the photos in the Results.
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Extreme Heat

#NYC tomorrow could be the hottest day in five years, apparently. Really worried about how things will be at the lab...

According to NYC's estimate we'll get 6x as many days above 90F by 2080. Certain types of jobs will have to keep body counts. Holy cow.

climate.cityofnewyork.us/challenges/e...

The "arsenic life" paper finally got retracted by Science after 15 years. RIP As-DNA. #microsky

Story time! When this paper came out in 2010, I was neck-deep trying to grow SAR11 on defined medium. Everyone thought there was some magic "missing" ingredient. Maybe nucleotide monophosphates? 1/6

Hey my polaroid shot made it to MoMA P.S.1 museum's instagram page! (Five weeks ago - I don't check the thing too often) Woot!