Maz

Congrats to those on this list, and it's great to see that, instead of the usual nominations process, original ideas and compelling arguments evaluated blindly by an expert panel were selected, resulting in new faces on the list rather than the usual ones.

😂

Now, imagine you’re a 60 year old billionaire funding biologists to help you live forever. Instead of progress toward immortality, they show you how many proteins they can ID.

In business, money is the metric of success. In academia, it’s citations.

But the sudden interest of billionaires in biology, longevity, and anti-aging seem to reflect desire to overcome mortality.

Aside from what you mentioned, I think he has a valid point. Don’t take the statement personal. Anyone with a laptop can create software, but biology requires expensive equipment that’s often only accessible to an elite class. Compared to electronics, progress in biology has been astonishingly slow.

Not sure how we ended up here. And I’m not sure how it gets fixed. But I do know it can’t go on like this.

🎓 ✈️ Student Travel Award – Deadline Extended!

Grad students working in Harsh Environment Mass Spectrometry (HEMS): apply now for a $1500 travel award to attend the 2025 HEMS Workshop!

New deadline: August 8, 2025

Open to M.S., M.A., and Ph.D. students.

These days, you can almost always guess which technique is reported to outperform the rest just by reading the conflict of interest (COI) statement.

Deep Blood Proteomics Identifies over 12,000 Proteins Providing Valuable Information about the State of the Human Body. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

And the same statement on the ASMS poster.

reporter.nih.gov/search/I4-Bl...

The cited grant (3R35GM118110) is not even relevant. The grant is for CryoEM+MS work & specifically defines the scope as "In particular we propose the addition of surface-induced dissociation (SID) and activated-ion ETD (AI-ETD) to the mass spectrometer used for grid preparation."

What’s not great in this situation is that both groups used NIH funding to do overlapping work. At the very least, there should’ve been some collaboration, if not for science, then to save NIH money. Especially now, when NIH itself is under fire. I’m sure you’re both following the news.

Even with credible data, science is under attack in Washington. Imagine if there were real evidence of widespread bad data or misconduct—they’d use it as an excuse to shut entire science agencies down. We’re all accountable and we are all responsible.

Your peers are watching, and that’s a good thing. If you slip, they’ll call it out, because the damage isn’t just personal. You can bring down trust in an entire field. Just look at Theranos.

The history of science is filled with examples of serious consequences for those who chose to compromise integrity. Your peers are always watching, scrutinizing your methods, your data, and your conclusions. That level of accountability is part of what keeps the system honest.

“…creates pressure on researchers to produce impressive results”
I think this is key. Is there not pressure to produce impressive results for private funding too?

With decreasing NIH funding, one could argue that scientists are at their most vulnerable, and that might compromise their integrity.

Very well said.

More than 100,000 Detectable Peptide Species Elute in Single Shotgun Proteomics Runs but the Majority is Inaccessible to Data-Dependent LC−MS/MS Shotgun proteomics entails the identification of as many peptides as possible from complex mixtures. Here we investigate how many peptides are detectable by high resolution MS in standard LC runs of c...

It seems there are always peptides present; the issue is just due to dynamic range limitations. pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1...

I can’t share much publicly beyond what’s disclosed in the patent application, but I’m happy to discuss further. What I can say is that this development opens up a significantly broader range of possibilities than what you and Coon reported.

@slavov-n.bsky.social l @coonlab.bsky.social: I disclosed this concept in the Super Mass Spec patent published on September 21, 2023 (see Figures 15D–E): patents.google.com/patent/US202...
Happy to collaborate if you're open to coming together and putting science first to push the field forward.

@vadim-demichev.bsky.social Your name is not on the ASMS poster presentation but it appears on the paper. Did anything change from the ASMS poster? Why you are not listed on the poster?

Why isn’t your paper cited?
@coonlab.bsky.social — would you mind responding?

There was another case where MAP-MS wasn’t cited, which @hamishs.bsky.social described as “a very easy oversight.” Let’s make sure this doesn’t become a trend.

Let’s assume these studies reporting 10,000 IDs are completely credible and everything is as solid as claimed. If that's the case, why is the Olink platform being used for the UK Biobank study?

Particularly, when over and over again, the results of the study align with the interest of the sponsors and the sponsors use these publications as a metric to show success. I mean there is not even a single publication to the contrary.

I would argue COI needs a careful and transparent COI management and mitigation plan. In other words, the conflicted person should show clearly how the COI is managed and mitigated. Simply declaring COI does not mean it is managed or mitigated.

And for those who say grant money isn’t enough—maybe it’s time to consider dialing back or even joining the sponsor’s company. There are plenty of researchers doing high-impact work funded entirely by grants, who would gladly step into that nonprofit role without relying on sponsored research.

COI issues keep surfacing with every sponsored paper published. Hard to tell when this will stop or if truly independent, unsponsored research is going to disappear altogether.