Neil Gemmell

Government’s new science institute to lose 6% of staff less than a year after forming The Bioeconomy Science Institute is shedding 6% of its staff.

And people wonder why NZ’s R&D spend is way lower than the rest of the OECD & our productivity is in the toilet. www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...

Illustration of a person lying on their stomach reading a book, appearing focused and engaged. Text reads: How do you edit Wikipedia? Luckily, there's a handy guide.

Every Wikipedia editor starts somewhere. Luckily, the Help:Directory makes the first step easy: it’s a collection of how-to pages and tutorials to guide volunteers through everything from creating categories to adding references.

🚨 New pre-print! 🚨 In the largest study of its kind to-date, we investigate the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms driving within-patient evolution of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Read here:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... , and follow along with this thread, discussing our findings (1/21)

I haven’t been this excited for a bubble to burst since I was a toddler.

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...

The algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects.

I really enjoyed this interview with Mihingarangi Forbes. In 20 minutes we managed to touch on numerous issues relating to how AI is changing society, issues I've been grappling daily in conversations with colleagues here in New Zealand.

Visiting academic to address spread of misinformation For Carl Bergstrom, misinformation is like a living organism — it can travel across networks and spread through populations like pathogens. The...

Landing in Dunedin Aotearoa in about 90 minutes for the start of a trip that represents the culmination of a dream I’ve had since I was ten years old.

This isn’t immigration policy. It’s a business model.

ICE keeps growing, not because it makes America safer, but because corporations are raking in billions off cages, bodies, and suffering. ICE’s existence is a massive revenue stream.

MetaZooGene Intercalibration Experiment (MZG‐ICE): Metabarcoding Marine Zooplankton Diversity of the Global Ocean DNA metabarcoding of zooplankton biodiversity is used increasingly for monitoring global ocean ecosystems, requiring comparable data from different research laboratories and ocean regions. The MetaZo...

Our last product of the SCOR WG157 MetaZooGene if out! We run a 10-laboratory intercomparison experiment on for zooplankton metabarcoding. Take home: major patterns hold, but sequencing platform matters, taq matters (a lot), add positive/negative controls...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Oh dear,
When Country Music is Coming out with these lyrics, Republicans better watch out.

A rare white Tui. A medium sized bush bird with a distinctive white throat tuft.

Another photo of a fluffed up white Tui with a 'normal' friend - this one appears black from a distance but has a blue sheen up close, a thin white ruff around its throat and a white throat tuft.

Seeing a white tui would be a birding highlight! www.nzherald.co.nz/rotorua-dail...
📷Nathan Pye

Three German universities offering post-docs for researchers "who cannot conduct or continue their work in the USA appropriately because of actual political pressure. "
www.uni-konstanz.de/zukunftskoll...

NZ's climate law to change - Expert Reaction - Science Media Centre Among several changes announced last night, the Government says the Climate Change Commission won't be required to advise on emissions reduction plans. The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will also be...

NZ’s climate law to change – Expert Reaction

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

Octopus tentacles emerging from a bush

Octobush was a hit in NZ

As the amount of mis/disinformation and other rubbish content has been allowed on social media #Wikipedia has become an increasingly important resource.
Knowing that plenty of experts in their field contribute or teach others like @adzebill.bsky.social also helps to build confidence in it.

YouTube video by 22 Minutes When the ICE agent is Canadian… | This Hour Has 22 Minutes

Meanwhile in Canada

youtu.be/S1yYGb1U31o

Meet the Physicist Who Wrote Over 2,000 Wikipedia Biographies for Women in STEM After noticing a lack of entries on Wikipedia for incredible women throughout history, this incredible woman decided to take matters into her own hands.

Jess Wade is amazing, and it's my absolute honour to be one of the more than 2000 women in STEM whose wikipedia page she started: mymodernmet.com/jessica-wade... 🧪🔭👩‍🔬

Just wow! 🧪🌍🦑🐳🦭

Evaluating sampling strategies for the detection of avian influenza viruses in the environment Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses threaten humans, livestock and wildlife, highlighting the urgent need for early warning surveillance. Environmental RNA (eRNA) monitoring provides a sa...

Our latest preprint evaluates sampling strategies for the detection of avian influenza virus from the environment @profgemmell.bsky.social @dwinter.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Image shows a screenshot of the conclusion of the linked Senate inquiry submission. This text can be found on page 10. The text is too long for alt text, but here is the first three quarters of the text: Conclusion Over the past decade, Nous Group’s UniForum data has quietly taken on the status of authoritative benchmark for the quality of a range of professional and academic services performed by public universities in Australia and across the world. This authoritative status is performed through scientific-looking graphs and scientific-sounding jargon designed to imply UniForum data is generated through rigorous methods and backed by expert consensus. This performance of authority is significant: it lends UniForum data an air of credibility and facticity that makes acting upon its results irresistible. When one begins to open the black box and examine how UniForum data is actually produced, however, it becomes difficult to justify the degree to which Australian university executives are relying upon it in their decision-making. My analysis is based on a review of publicly available documents, and it is therefore possible that Nous or its clients would point to things not in the public domain that address some of the conceptual and methodological flaws that I have highlighted in UniForum. But the fact that the underlying UniForum data and methodology is not in the public domain is itself one of the key causes for concerns. When the stakes are so high, it cannot be acceptable for Nous Group and its clients to simply tell university staff and governing councils, ‘trust us, these numbers are based on rigorous methods and analysis.’ The lack of rigor, external scrutiny, and transparency in UniForum’s underlying data and methodology would be a cause for concern in any public institution, but it is especially concerning in the context of universities where rigorous, transparent, and accountable knowledge production is a core part of what we do. ...

Private consultants are taking control of how public universities are evaluated and run.

My submission to the Senate university governance inquiry raises concerns about the impact of Nous Group and their dodgy UniForum data on our universities.

www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStor...

A thread

Fake quote from me on "Canada Resists"

Fake quote from me on Dean Blundell substack

Fake quote from me in (allegedly) Haitian website

A large number of articles with fake quotes from me have appeared on "Resist"/Dem accounts. I suspect they were written with AI because they are so formulaic. Other "experts" are cited -- all without links. If you see a quote from me without a link to the source, beware. Examples of fakes:

World's highest court sends shot across bow of NZ's climate policy The International Court of Justice's finding that granting fossil fuel exploration licences could breach international law casts a shadow over the Govt's oil and gas plans.

New: The International Court of Justice’s finding that granting fossil fuel exploration licences could breach international law casts a shadow over the New Zealand Government’s oil and gas plans.
newsroom.co.nz/2025/07/25/w...

Smartphone alerts of preshake warnings for 2.5 billion people in 98 countries countries over the past 3 years
@science.org

science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Data manipulation within the US Federal Government A US Department of Veterans Affairs dataset compiling veteran health-care use in 2021 was quietly amended on March 5, 2025. A column titled gender was renamed sex, and the words were also switched in ...

US science politics

Political meddling of scientific datasets?
And not logging changes.

“We found that 114 (49%) of the 232 included datasets were substantially altered.” – mostly changing 'gender' to 'sex'.

Data manipulation within the US Federal Government
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Billboard beside road with text that reads: WHEN DID FIRING PARK RANGERS, SCIENTISTS, AND AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS BECOME A BETTER IDEA THAN SIMPLY TAXING BILLIONAIRES?

We seriously need a crowdfunding campaign to put a billboard up like this everywhere

Donaghy's rope and twine factory from Macandrew Road (1920s?). Hocken Digital Collections.

Love this initiative about my old hood in South Dunedin. The dots further enhanced with a photo such as this one showing Donaghy's rope walk but also a Chinese market garden on Macandrew Rd c. 1920s. Something for Phase 2 when the community adds their dots www.dreamsouthd.org.nz/did-you-know...

Foundations: please step up and take over the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This is an absolutely essential scanned archive of all of the old journals and books from the 1500s to about 1920. Has been indispensable for my research.
about.biodiversitylibrary.org/call-for-sup...

The White House has ordered the US Dept. of Justice to prioritize denaturalization: voiding the citizenship of US citizens.

Who will it denaturalize? "Any" case that it "determines to be sufficiently important".

Point 10 leaves the criteria opaque and arbitrary.

substack.com/redirect/169...

Oral submission times slashed Regulatory Standards Bill Graph: Oral submission hours for fast-track Bill: 100 hours Oral submission hours for Treaty Principles Bill: 80 Oral submission hours for Regulatory Standards Bill: 30 Your voice is being silenced Authorised by Duncan Webb MP, Parliament Buildings Wellington

Oral submission times for the Regulatory Standards Bill have been slashed. This Government doesn't want to hear from you.