Gokul Rajan

The importance of stupidity in scientific research I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science, although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school...

you're can't do any real science if you are not comfortable with feeling stupid.

if you are doing science (at any level), you should absolutely read this ~17 years old piece -- the importance of "absolute stupidity" in science.

journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Der Weg zur Höllen sey mit lauter gutem Vorsatz gepflastert.

imho: skills are overrated; motivation is underrated.

1) with motivation, new skills come fast.
2) without it, skills mean nothing.

two very different hunters i'm playing with: drosera and hippocampus.

NeuroSC: Leveraging Pretrained Single-Cell Models for Bra... NeuroSC: Leveraging Pretrained Single-Cell Models for Brain Ce...

Peer-review and peer-fund pilot projects on @researchhubf.bsky.social!

I just funded: NeuroSC: Leveraging Pretrained Single-Cell Models for Brain Cell Classification on ResearchHub.

www.researchhub.com/fund/4262/ne...

New leaves, new tentacles, more hunting. 🌱

Effects of psilocybin and related compounds on neuroprote... Effects of psilocybin and related compounds on neuroprotection...

Turns out that I had some research tokens on @researchhubf.bsky.social -- earned from my past publications(!!) -- that I could use to fund new research proposals submitted by others. I just did exactly that.

Why have you not? Be the change you want to see.

www.researchhub.com/fund/4261/ef...

TIL: when I see the electric scooters in the sea or streams, it's not the app glitching!

Not kidding -- just read a paper where the person who made the discovery was thanked in the acknowledgements. How do I know? Because he was literally thanked as The discoverer!

Welcome to science, where credit goes to the cool dude with the mic.

Citation isn’t an ego contest. It’s how we acknowledge the intellectual work of others -- regardless of where they published or who they are. Cite relevance, not reputation.

When a paper cites everything around the key prior work but specifically skips the actual prior work that directly addressed their claim, it tells me more about the authors than the topic.

Fifteen years later, Science retracts ‘arsenic life’ paper despite study authors’ protests Belated decision on widely disputed 2010 study pleases some critics but puzzles and dismays others

when you select for "sexiness" and overlook rigor, science becomes clickbait. this arsenic life paper wasn’t just a one-off fluke -- it is a symptom of what happens when journals and funders chase headlines.

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

Just found out that my first-ever trainee -- a bachelor’s student from Sorbonne during my PhD -- is now doing a PhD in Neuroscience. Not taking any credit, but it still feels really good. :)

Bold questions. Thoughtful reasoning. Smart tools. That's what it celebrates!

Ever wonder if individuals can make a difference -- or if we must wait for institutions to catch up? Sometimes, it’s worth trying the former.

The Danionella Prize: a tiny, personal gesture to reward curiosity, from India and Myanmar.

danionellaprize.xyz

A beautiful carnivore just entered our plant collection! 🌱

Most people don’t lack values -- they just lack the courage to live them when it’s inconvenient to them.

Integrity isn’t measured by what you say you care about -- it’s what you do when no one else speaks up.

A biocompatible Lossen rearrangement in Escherichia coli - Nature Chemistry Biocompatible chemistry merges chemo-catalytic reactions with cellular metabolism for sustainable small-molecule synthesis. Now a biocompatible Lossen rearrangement has been demonstrated to control ba...

what?! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

why is this called gold open access? is it because it is fixed at the price of 146.6 gm of gold?

Good ideas can cross continents in seconds but take years to cross an office desk.

50,000 years of evolutionary history of India: Impact on health and disease variation A genomic study of 2,762 individuals from India offers important insights into the genomic diversity and evolutionary history of the subcontinent and highlights the extensive genetic variation, gene f...

In my weekly scan-every-journal marathon, last week I enjoyed reading this paper. Insightful work on 50,000 years of India’s genetic history and caste endogamy.

I suspect colonial disruptions further amplified these disease burdens.

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

"America has done what no other country on earth could do."

Indeed, and for many decades now. Interfering in international geopolitics that is none of their business.

Indeed. I was fortunate to attend Dr. KK Rao's Genetic Engineering course and lab work at IIT Bombay before he retired.

neural bloom - Gokul Rajan - OpenProcessing powered by neuronal voxel recording

neural bloom.
openprocessing.org/sketch/2659017

(returning to processing after a really long time)

. @ardemp.bskyverified.social on how to science:

. @anumukherjee.bsky.social and I made an interesting observation of how this geocentric clock stands right opp to the bell tower in Venice where Galileo would demo his telescope and later spend last decade of his life in house arrest for using this scope to support the Copernican heliocentric view

YouTube video by 3Blue1Brown Zooming out by powers of 10

few things that are always mind blowing about this:

> the humbling vastness of the cosmos
> the almost eerie similarity between brain cell networks and galaxy superclusters
> and as @3blue1brown.com says, the sheer fact that we can even measure this

youtube.com/shorts/C8baN...

Super interesting!

'Deplorable': French scientist denied US entry over text messages criticising Trump French officials have expressed their dismay after a French scientist was denied entry into the United States because immigration officers found text messages containing a "personal opinion" about the...

more reasons to have international scientific meetings in Europe and the global south. more accessible to a truly international audience.

ahttps://www.france24.com/en/americas/20250320-french-scientist-denied-us-entry-over-text-messages-criticising-trump