John Fowler (he/him)

Ain't No Party Like an Administrative Burden Party You are cordially invited to Admin Night - bring your paperwork

We're drowning in passwords & multi-factor authentication & chatbots & "unusually high call volume" & robots ignoring "representative!"

We should think more carefully about how Social Security uses these tools with our parents & grandparents.

donmoynihan.substack.com/p/aint-no-pa...

A drawing in black pen by a youthful aspiring artist, with three stick figure people (one with multiple tears shown), and a bird attacking an apparently full size corn plant. The sun, a swing set and a building are also present. Above the scene are the eords “Dear Daddy I hope you have a Nice Day a especially because Brids ate your corn! We love Your corn and You! Love liza!”

Corn and crows. After I had a very bad day in the field, when crows had decimated nearly an entire plot of seedlings, my youngest surprised me with this drawing. Treasured artifact. In the end, probably worth the loss in the field.

The phylotranscriptomic profile of angiosperm seed development follows a reverse hourglass pattern Angiosperm seed development exhibits a reverse phylotranscriptomic pattern, with early and late stages showing greater conservation and mid-phase showing h

Absolutely happy to share our latest publication!🥳🎉
The first manuscript of the first PhD candidate of my team! 🥹🤩
Huge congratulations to our brilliant Asif Ahmed Sami for his excellent work! ✨️

academic.oup.com/plcell/artic...

Fifteen Years

Read me Thanks to @punkrockscience.bsky.social for the pointer
xkcd.com/3172/

Pan-family pollen signals control an interspecific stigma barrier across Brassicaceae species Pre-zygotic interspecific incompatibility prevents hybridization between species limiting interbreeding strategies for crop improvement using wild relatives. The Brassica rapa female self-incompatibil...

Out First Release in @science.org
A pollen ligand, SIPS, binds to the female receptor, SRK. SIPS binds to a conserved region of SRK, for interspecific incompatibility, unlike the self-incompatibility factor, which binds to a different, variable region
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
#PlantScience

A green promotional graphic announcing that several BSA awards are now open. At the top, large white text reads: “These BSA Awards Are Now Open!” Listed below are five award opportunities, each preceded by a small white leaf icon: – Donald R. Kaplan Memorial Lecture Nominations Deadline Jan. 15, 2026 – Corresponding Member Awards Deadline Feb. 2, 2026 – $10,000 – Donald R. Kaplan Dissertation Award in Comparative Morphology Deadline Feb. 2, 2026 – $10,000 – Graduate Student Dissertation Award in Phylogenetic Comparative Plant Biology Deadline Feb. 2, 2026 – $1500 – Graduate Student Research Awards (J.S. Karling Graduate Student Research Award and AJ Harris Graduate Student Research Award) Deadline Feb. 16, 2026 At the bottom is the URL “www.botany.org/home/awards.html,” a QR code, and a close-up image of a bright green leaf. BSA partner logos appear in the lower-left corner.

BSA’s 2026 awards cycle is now open! Kaplan Lecture, Corresponding Member, two $10k dissertation awards, and Graduate Student Research Awards—all with early 2026 deadlines. Join or renew now to be eligible and take advantage of these opportunities.

www.botany.org/home/awards.html

#BSAawards

How and for whom can genetics education reduce beliefs in genetic essentialism? pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41267401/
"We also find that the 3 intervention curricula are highly effective across sociodemographic group characteristics [...] we offer evidence-based strategies for curriculum development"

Lovely paper! Thank you to all the authors for their work, including writing it up for all of us -

Just so freaking refreshing this dude

Yes, going for the =opposite= of the “exercise of an ever-lowering ceiling of possibility”.

It's good to be back with a new season of #No_Time_To_Read_podcast! 🍀

This podcast, which I started as a postdoc, is growing with me. Thanks for your support over the years.

We have great a line up of awesome plant scientists appearing in Season 4! 🎙️

open.spotify.com/episode/4xHh...

Intracellular competition shapes plasmid population dynamics From populations of multicellular organisms to selfish genetic elements, conflicts between levels of biological organization are central to evolution. Plasmids are extrachromosomal, self-replicating g...

Hot off the press! Our latest paper led by @fernpizza.bsky.social, understanding how plasmids evolve inside cells. These small, self-replicating DNA circles live inside bacteria and carry antibiotic resistance genes, but also compete with one another to replicate. 1/
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#UBC Botany is hiring an Assistant Professor in Non-Seed Plant Diversity - come work with us in beautiful #Vancouver, BC! Please repost!

academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31140

NAASC is happy to share the newly elected:
1- faculty: Anna Dobritsa, Ohio State University, Tomo Kawashima, University of Kentucky, USA
2- early career scholars: Maria Gómez Méndez, UC Riverside, USA Daniela DeLa Mora, CINVESTAV Mexico, Julia Zheku, UBC, Canada!
Thanks to all on the ballot! 💚

Research Associate-Fixed Term - East Lansing, Michigan, United States Position Summary The Lowry Lab at Michigan State University is searching for a postdoctoral research associate to conduct molecular and physiological experiments to understand the causes of genetic va...

I am currently searching for a new postdoctoral researcher to study the evolution, genetics, and physiology of cold acclimation and freezing tolerance in switchgrass at Michigan State University. This work will be funded by a newly funded five-year DOE grant. careers.msu.edu/jobs/researc...

I ignore fashion trends. I’m only interested in fashion that’s statistically significant.

USDA scientists - like Sherry & those in her group - rock! My thanks to all of them for hanging on through a difficult year -

I was fortunate to listen a great talk by Sherry Flint-Garcia this morning in the Zeavolution seminar series.

The pigmentation imaging of maize kernel at cellular level is gorgeous! 🌽🔬

Happy to say that with the US govt now chugging along again we’ll have Sherry Flint-Garcia presenting at #Zeavolution tomorrow!

Applications due by Dec. 1

Phased epigenomics and methylation inheritance in a historical Vitis vinifera hybrid - Genome Biology Background Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, regulate transcription and influence key biological traits. While many efforts were made to understand their stability in annual crops, th...

🍇 From Genome Biology: Grapevine clones show stable, inherited methylation across centuries. A phased genome framework reveals long-term epigenetic patterns in Cabernet lineages. (Noé Cochetel, Amanda M. Vondras, Rosa Figueroa-Balderas, Dario Cantu)
▶️ link.springer.com/article/10.1...
#PlantScience

Resumption of Operations at NSF Information for NSF staff and the research community regarding the agency's resumption of operations after a lapse in appropriations.

Science People: We at NSF are still recovering/catching up/getting our lives together. But the agency posted these FAQs about post-shutdown resumption of operations which might answer a lot of Qs for you: www.nsf.gov/resumption-o...

Academia is a really racist and sexist place. Larry Summers, as the president of Harvard, epitomized that racism and sexism but he is not unique. That's why we needed DEI.

Ancient fossil reveals how plants and fungi first developed on land | Natural History Museum A new fossil fungus discovered in Scotland shows evidence of plants and fungi sharing nutrients to survive on land.

Ancient fossil reveals how plants & fungi first developed on land www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...
Summary of An arbuscular mycorrhiza from 407-million-year-old Windyfield Chert identified through advanced fluorescence and Raman imaging @newphyt.bsky.social
nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Universal rules govern plasmid copy number - Nature Communications Plasmids exhibit a broad range of sizes and copies per cell, and these two parameters appear to be negatively correlated. Here, Ramiro-Martínez et al. analyse the copy number of thousands of diverse b...

Curious about plasmid biology? Our latest paper is out now in Nature Communications! 🚨

doi.org/10.1038/s414...

We analyzed thousands of diverse bacterial plasmids to shed light for the first time on a key aspect of plasmid biology: plasmid copy number. 1/7 👇

So many prominent Chinese-American scientists whose lives and careers were turned upside down in the first Trump administration.

The 5 year retroactive punishment is like penalizing something for an ‘infraction’ which was not even an infraction when the action occurred. How does this make sense?

Because international student enrollment is so often used as a cudgel in discussions about immigration, this is a good time to remind people that international students aren't taking up spaces for US students at state schools, they are paying full tuition that FUNDS SCHOLARSHIPS FOR US STUDENTS.

Image text: 2026 Plantae Fellows. www.plantae.org | www.aspb.org. Features ASPB & Plantae Logos, and Plantae Fellows' names and headshot photos.

📣ASPB is happy to announce the 2026 Plantae Fellows, an impressive group ready to bring their best to this resource for the global plant science community!🌱

Read more: buff.ly/CDI47lq

#PlantScience

Protesters outside of city hall in Newport

Protest Signs

I am currently in Newport, OR for a public hearing at city hall to listen to resident concerns on a potential ICE facility that officials are considering putting in town. The room is completely packed, the hallways are packed, there and tons of people protesting ICE outside and

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...