Assoc Prof Robyn Pickering

The ecological and evolutionary consequences of systemic racism in urban environments Cities create challenging environments for many nonhuman species, and the presence of nonhumans in cities influences the health and well-being of the humans with which they share the environment. Dist...

In a 2020 #ScienceReview, researchers investigated how systematic racist practices such as residential segregation have led to an unequal distribution of “nature” within cities.

Learn more on #WorldHabitatDay: https://scim.ag/3KQnEir

When we hear about a lone scientist who made groundbreaking discoveries on their own, it’s usually erasing the truth that science is a team sport, and field research builds on the local knowledge and expertise of the people that live there (8/10)

We can remember Goodall’s accomplishments and legacy while recognizing that National Geographic created a narrative that erased the local people who contributed to her research. Her African colleagues deserve to be credited, not erased (10/10).

What the narrative leaves out is the contributions of the local Tanzanians who assisted and facilitated Goodall's early research, as well as preceding and concurrent research. Nat Geo created a story about a lone white woman alone with chimpanzees, erasing the Africans that were beside her (3/10)

Important thread 🧵👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

Bluesky, I need your help. Or rather, my friend Makgosi does. She's trying not to get evicted from her place - as a wheelchair-user, accessible accommodation is so difficult to find - and is in a huge pickle this month. If you've got anything to spare, her PayPal is mletimile@gmail.com ❤️

Jane Goodall’s legacy: three ways she changed science Nature - The primatologist challenged what it meant to be a scientist.

Jane Goodall, known for her pioneering work with chimpanzees, has passed away aged 91

go.nature.com/46QHIZk

Makgosi Letimile's fight for disability rights in the workplace Makgosi Letimile who is wheelchair-bound, has hauled her former employer to the Labour Court in a matter that will shine a spotlight on the workplace duty to provide reasonable accommodation to disabl...

Makgosi is being dragged through a neverending court battle after suing her former employer for unfair dismissal. We're four years in. She can't find work.

a flow-chart with 2 islands. "Do I need AI?" that flows into a final island saying "No"

This sexual harassment workshop, led by our Co-director Rebecca Ackermann, is one of the most important parts of #campHERI.

The session invites women to share experiences, learnings and concerns about harassment in the field.

Meet the #campHERI 2025 crew! These are the amazing participants from yesterday’s 3MT session and Sexual Harassment Workshop.

📍 Sunday morning at #campHERI, camping at the West Coast Fossil Park: Participants took part in a stone tool knapping exercise, engaging with ancient technologies through hands-on learning in an immersive outdoor setting.

Image description: A coffee cup, notepad, and pencil. Text reading: 'WEBINAR SERIES Uneven Ground: Addressing Vulnerabilities in Fieldwork Watch the recording now available on YouTube!'

#EGU, along with the #EDI and ECS working groups, is committed to shedding light on the multifaceted nature of #vulnerabilities in the #fieldwork.

This #webinar shares actionable strategies to create safer, more #inclusive, and supportive field environments.

👉 Watch the 📹 here: egu.eu/5P7W0Z

I am filled with so much love and gratitude that I cannot grieve. Dr. Goodall worked tirelessly in her gentle, hopeful way for a better world for all life on Earth. She has laid down her field notebook for the last time; now it is for us to fill with wonder, joy, and connection, into infinity.

Such sad news 💔

I mean she could not actually live forever but 💔💔💔

Hearing her speak and having a brief chat afterwards as a science undergraduate student is one of my treasured life experiences.

And had a huge influence on my thinking about making our academic research relevant.

European tree cover during the Holocene reconstructed from pollen records Abstract. Changes in tree cover influence many aspects of the earth system. Recent regional changes in tree cover, as documented by remote-sensed observations, are insufficient in capturing the…

🗞️ New article in Biogeosciences #EGU by Luke Sweeney et al. ⬇️

Glad to see fossils repatriated!

Women let down by how institutions handle incidents of sexual harassment – new study reveals almost half of women reporting incidents have negative experience #highered
https://ow.ly/tBIF50X2V5N

The same "planet" that didn't have borders for most of its existence; we've done fine as a species without borders for most of our existence. The anomaly is border restrictions, which were drawn up by racist colonisers. Why do people treat borders as sacred demarcations from gods?

You know who’s amazing? The #MinCup25 admins, that’s who! Ballot stuffing makes their lives difficult during this completely fun, silly, educational thing they make happen. Vote for the mineral you love, and vote only once to show love for the admins, please & thank you!

Also, vote #Dioptase please

Driven by the pain of endometriosis, this scientist is uncovering clues to its causes Katie Burns is helping reveal the immune system’s role in the long-neglected disease

So, right now, the only reliable way to diagnose endometriosis is with exploratory surgery. But finally, real scientists (instead of male scientists), are on the job & of course they’ve identified multiple markers in menstrual blood that point to noninvasive testing.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Philanthropies Strike a Promising Deal to Turn Back H.I.V.

A deal to allow generic versions of HIV-prevention shots in lower income countries is fabulous news. Just $40/year (vs $28K in the US)

Great news, but as usual, middle-income nations with high poverty & lots of HIV are left out.

By @apoorvanyt.bsky.social
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/h...

Unburied S2E1: When Humanity Became African Podcast Episode · ARC · 25/09/2025 · 31m

My almost unfathomably cool friend @pickeringrobyn.bsky.social and the rest of the team at UCT's Human Evolution Research Institute (HERI) have a new podcast that takes aim at colonial-era myths around one of the most important fossil discoveries of all time.

podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/u...

YouTube video by BioantTalks Exploring Digital Ethics and Public Opinion on the Display of Human Ancestors on YouTube

My webinar talk about digital ethics on the display of human ancestors on Youtube for the BeFRAIL webinar series is now live on my Youtube channel BioantTalks #ethics #bioanthropology #anthropology
youtu.be/Ne0YC1x6QwQ

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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

WHO statement on autism-related issues Follow @WHO for the latest updates

WHO statement on autism-related issues

The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes that there is currently no conclusive scientific evidence confirming a possible link between #autism and use of acetaminophen (also known as paracetamol) during pregnancy

Full statement bit.ly/47YsgwI

Validating how we can go beyond the article Discover how PLOS is reimagining research publishing beyond the article, advancing open science, reforming assessment, and driving systemic change.

PLOS is exploring how research publishing can be a lever for systemic change, moving away from a broken research assessment system to one that recognizes every contribution to #openscience – before and after the article.

🔗 Read “Validating how we can go beyond the article”:

Tried to get my real ID. I had my license, my SS card and my birth certificate.

I was not allowed to get my real ID because my birth name is different than my married name. Now I have to go dig up a marriage certificate. You know who wouldn’t have to do this? A man.

Never change your last name.

So the AI will never work, and they knew it 😂😂

Throwback Summer – retracing student steps at the Pic Saint-Loup, France The region around the Pic Saint-Loup is a popular destination for many European universities to teach mapping field courses – and there is a reason for it, even besides the great landscape, good food ...

The region around the Pic Saint-Loup is a popular destination for many EU universities to teach mapping field courses – and there is a reason for it, even besides the great landscape, good food and nice weather.

Join Lauretta Kaerger on a tour to find out!
Full post 👉: tinyurl.com/PicSLoup