Yngvild Vindenes

Jane Goodall with monarch butterfly scarf

“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.”
― Jane Goodall

💙 RIP to a real one. My childhood hero

The Washington Post Fired Me — But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced. I spoke out against hatred and violence in America — and it cost me my job.

Some personal news:

I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting.

Thread incoming.

substack.com/@karenattiah...

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species

go.nature.com/4mOb5T9

Text reads: Mozilla, in its finite wisdom, embedded LLM bots into recent versions of Firefox for the vitally-important purpose of... naming tab groups. Now, some users are noticing CPU and power usage spikes caused by a background process called Inference. Ugh. Reminder again for Firefox users to visit your about:config page, search for the browser.ml.chat.enabled key, and set that to false: Displayed is a screenshot of Firefox showing the config search bar with the listed search. The word "false" is circled in red. Text continues: If yours says true then double-click it until it reads false. Doing that turns off the Al chatbot features in Firefox, but also the stupid new LLM tab-naming feature that's rolling out.

Just a heads up to anyone using Firefox:

The Lancet One Health Commission: harnessing our interconnectedness for equitable, sustainable, and healthy socioecological systems Industrialisation, urbanisation, and globalisation have substantially improved human life expectancy over the past century. In tandem, an expanding array of interlinked threats to humans, other animal...

An ambitious new report, commissioned by #TheLancet, seeks to reframe #OneHealth to be an even more encompassing framework. I spoke with co-chairs Andrea Winkler and John Amuasi about their process.

The report: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

My interview: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

ChatGPT tends to ignore retractions on scientific papers Study finds the chatbot doesn’t acknowledge concerns with problematic studies

“The study authors asked GPT 4o-mini to evaluate the quality of 217 papers. The tool didn’t mention in any of the reports that the papers being analyzed had been retracted or had validity issues.

In 190 cases, GPT described the papers as world leading, internationally excellent, or close to that”

Associate Professor in molecular/cellular animal physiology (281754) | NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology Job title: Associate Professor in molecular/cellular animal physiology (281754), Employer: NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Deadline: Monday, September 1, 2025

Associate Professor position in animal physiology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology
(to replace me basically). An amazing permanent position at a great university!

Please spread widely 🙏

www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

RFK Jr. pulls funding for vaccines being developed to fight respiratory viruses The projects — 22 of them — are being led by some of the nation’s leading pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna to prevent flu, COVID-19 and H5N1 infections.

Vaccines are our greatest scientific achievement. This is criminal.

To whom it may concern, and it should concern the editor: I was quoted in your publication: https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/oceans/can-we-engineer-our-way-out-of-ocean-acidification/ Still, others aren't convinced that good intentions are enough. Dr. David Ho, Professor of Oceanography at University of Hawaii at Manoa, a cofounder and the Chief Science Officer of |C|Worthy, a non-profit that works on verifying ocean-based carbon dioxide removal, believes carbon removal efforts like ocean alkalinity enhancement shouldn't be left solely in the hands of private companies. "They have no way to prove that what they're doing is effective - that's a big problem," Dr Ho said. The crux of the dilemma, he explains, is that we are fighting a planetary-scale problem, but are doing it with tools that are still being built and tested. Geoengineering is not inherently good or bad, but it is inherently powerful. And power, especially when exercised in ecosystems as complex and fragile as the ocean, must be handled with caution. However, I have never spoken to your reporter, nor would I have said those things. I would like you to remove my quote from your story, and issue a public correction and apology. Furthermore, you should look into whether the other parts of the article are also factually correct. Thanks. d.

WTF? I was quoted in this story but I have never spoken to the reporter nor would I have said those things. Is everything just generated by LLMs these days?

cosmosmagazine.com/earth/oceans...

For more details on these results, plus results on ageing in the reproductive rate, see the paper. All data and files for the analyses are also published and openly available on Figshare: (7/7)

Global warming is certainly a challenge for many ectotherms, and reduced fitness will likely occur with rising mean temperatures. However, this reduction in fitness may often be due to other causes than increased ageing (for example increased mortality in early life). (6/7)

Picture of a daphnia magna female with babies in the brood pouch on the back. This female is 28 days old, of the SE-G1 clone used in the experiment.

Our results for the daphnia suggest that observing increased rates of ageing of ectotherms in warmer environments is not necessarily a sign of stress or reduced population viability. Further research is needed to tell whether this is a common pattern across ectotherms. (5/7)

A figure from the analysis with three panels, showing fitness (leftmost panel), net reproductive rate (middle panel) and generation time (right panel) for the four clonal lines used in the experiment. The results are calculated from matrix population models, for more details see the paper.

In addition, clonal lines with stronger ageing often showed higher fitness (long-term population growth rate) and net reproductive rate, calculated by matrix population models. (4/7)

A figure from the analysis showing the relationship between pace (x-axis) and shape (y-axis) of ageing in mortality. Each panel represents one of four clonal lines, and results are color coded by temperature. The shape of ageing (y-axis) shows different temperature responses in the four clonal lines.

When comparing the strength of ageing (shape; the relative increase in mortality hazard over one mean lifespan) on the same intrinsic timescale (pace; units of mean lifespan), temperature did not have consistent effects among the clonal lines. (3/7)

A figure from the analysis, showing that the rate of ageing in mortality (slope, y-axis) increases with temperature, while the age-independent intercept (x-axis) shows a more variable temperature pattern. Each panel shows results from one of four clonal lines. The color code represents temperature, shown in the legend.

While temperature consistently increased the rate of ageing in mortality (slope in the attached figure), it had different effects on the baseline mortality (intercept) and thereby on mean lifespan in different clonal lines. (2/7)

Understanding the role of ageing in the thermal responses of life history and fitness in Daphnia magna | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences The current climate warming has raised concerns that increased rates of ageing will lead to reduced fitness and population viability in ectotherms. However, it is currently not known whether temperatu...

Do ectotherms age more strongly in warm environments? And if so, does it mean reduced fitness and population viability in a warmer world? We investigated these questions in a recent study based on an experiment with Daphnia magna (1/7)
@t-ergon.bsky.social
@biovitenskap.bsky.social

Springer Nature book on machine learning is full of made-up citations Would you pay $169 for an introductory ebook on machine learning with citations that appear to be made up? If not, you might want to pass on purchasing Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Ad…

Would you pay $169 for an introductory ebook on machine learning with citations that appear to be made up?

Intern Rita Aksenfeld's first story for Retraction Watch

There Were Still Old People When Life Expectancy Was 35. A demography myth that won't die

“Historically, no one lived past age 35”

"I’ve heard *so* many versions of this claim, including recently from a menopause doctor (implying menopause is not “natural” because noone lived long enough to go through it). Every time someone states this “fact,” a demographer loses a piece of their soul"

I’ve warned that this was only a matter of time, but it’s still shocking to see in person.

Here AI generated content is being used to create a fake news ecosystem, disparaging a professor who has been critical of unscientific bullshit in the form of deextinction hype.

Entire Fulbright board quits, citing Trump administration interference In an open letter, the board said that the administration denied awards to a "substantial" number of selected individuals.

Entire Fulbright board quits, citing Trump administration interference

Proposed cut to NSF Biology budget is 70%.

70%. Seventy.

Call your senators & reps nonstop. Give them numbers on NSF impact for state/district. tableau.external.nsf.gov/views/NSFbyN... explain this will decimate the economy if their districts, especially if it has a major research univ. 🧪

Sign The Open Letter to Stand Up For Science Now! Science is under siege. Trump’s latest Executive Order calls for politically appointed science commissars to evaluate research. Join us in adding your name to our open letter condemning Trump’s escala...

🚨 URGENT RESPONSE CALL 🚨

Trump’s Fool’s Gold Science EO is a dangerous sham.
It gives his appointees the power to dismiss entire bodies of research and punish researchers who fail to fall in line with his agenda.

We’ve launched an open letter.

SIGN & SHARE NOW: actionnetwork.org/petitions/op...

Trump officials take steps toward a radically different NSF Efforts to shrink staff, budget, and focus have alarmed members of Congress

NSF grant terminations are disproportionately affecting underrepresented scientists. 58% of canceled grants have women PIs, despite making up only 34% of awards. 17% of canceled grants have Black PIs (versus 4% of the pool). Hispanic and disabled PIs are twice as likely to have NSF grants canceled.

What makes me mad about AI in education How to crush a generation and tell them they're winning

I wrote about the widespread adoption of AI in education, and why there needs to be more resistance to it

open.substack.com/pub/irinadum...

Mites Are a Made-Up Taxon: New Analysis Further Debunks Long-Held Classification What scientists know as "mites" is almost certainly an artificial taxonomic group, according to recent phylogenetic analyses and studies using advanced microscopic techniques.

What scientists know as "mites" is almost certainly an artificial taxonomic group, according to recent phylogenetic analyses and studies using advanced microscopic techniques.

In only two years, ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.

James D. Walsh writes for @intelligencer.com: nymag.com/intelligence....

Associate Professor in evolutionary genomics of vertebrates (279638) | NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology Job title: Associate Professor in evolutionary genomics of vertebrates (279638), Employer: NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Deadline: Sunday, May 25, 2025

The Department of Natural History at NTNU is seeking an ambitious candidate for an open position as associate professor in vertebrate evolutionary genomics. Please see 👇 for details. Deadline for applications is May 25.

www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

The final question in the exam for one my online classes is "What is the most exciting or useful thing you learned in this class?"— this time around, it was shocking to see a bunch of LLM-generated answers (one even including "Certainly, I can help you think of something useful from your class…") 😢

An ambiguous brown creature with two legs, an eye, and a long pointed nose. Text: the animal.

Three animals: a weevil, an echidna, and a kiwi bird. They are all drawn with similar silhouettes, highlighting round body shape, short legs, and long snouts. Text: snout collective.

Has anyone else caught on to this?

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.