Kudos to @science.org for this self-analysis of the peer review process. These kind of data are never shared and don't have to be. Wildly refreshing to see it out in the open. Editorial and peer review dynamics at elite general science journals | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Editorial and peer review dynamics at elite general science journals

Analyses of deidentified data reveal complex interactions that quantify success at elite general science journals.

science.org

Our response in @addictionjournal.bsky.social to a hyperbolic critique of Australia's track record in tobacco control which over-eggs N Zealand as the way for a vape-led plunge in smoking, when other nations w liberal access vape policies don't match onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Problems in comparing tobacco regulatory models and excise when only two countries are considered

Click on the article title to read more.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Australia’s under 16s social media ban is widely circumvented, study finds, as UK plans similar restrictions www.bmj.com/content/393/...

Diabetes doctors were forcibly removed from the American Diabetes Association annual conference for handing out paper criticising US administration www.bmj.com/content/393/...

This is great, mRNA tech is remarkable. But who will own the knowledge? Will a US company end up with monopoly control of a vaccine that almost exclusively affects Afrcans.

Kathleen Bachynski@bachynski.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“CEPI is also awarding up to $50 million to Boston-based Moderna to create an mRNA vaccine for Bundibugyo… In 2018, Alexander Bukreyev, a virologist at the University of Texas, and his colleagues reported that a Moderna mRNA vaccine provided guinea pigs with 100 percent protection from Ebola virus.”

Oh for goodness' sakes @news.abc.net.au. The services weren't 'divisive' except for the tiny handful of people who were being horribly disrespectful to our war dead by trying to make the day all about their own racism. #AlwaysWasAlwaysWillBe 🖤💛❤️

ABC News Australia@news.abc.net.au · 2mo ago

Reconciliation Week puts spotlight on Welcome to Country tradition after divisive Anzac Day services

We are calling for Equitable Remuneration (ER) to be embedded in Australian copyright law - ensuring creators are paid when their work is used, including by AI. This isn’t optional. It’s the foundation of a sustainable creative economy. #PayUp Learn more: meaa.io/payup

It’s always striking how the decline in alcohol consumption is covered as a business problem instead of a win for public health.

Can the World Cup Help the U.S. Beer Industry Kick Its Slump?

nytimes.com

Oh hell yeah @amnesty.org comes out swinging: "Amnesty International finds that standalone generative AI systems... are fundamentally incompatible with IHRL. As such, Amnesty International is calling for a prohibition of such systems." www.amnesty.org/en/documents...

Important news from a meta-analysis of 69 (!! 🤯) studies. NO evidence for calcium +/- vit D for most people in the community. But an equally important caveat: insufficient evidence to make conclusions for patients already at high risk or in residential care.

The BMJ@bmj.com · 3mo ago

New #BMJResearch: Calcium, vitamin D, or combined supplements offer little to no clinically meaningful benefit on fracture and fall prevention in most older people, finds in-depth review of the latest evidence https://bit.ly/4tKWgTM Linked commentary https://bit.ly/3PUgahk

New paper in Nature. The more a government controls its domestic media, the more it dominates AI training data, the more pro-regime outputs we get from AI. By scraping the open web, LLMs are unwittingly laundering state-coordinated narratives into seemingly objective answers.

Birth rate discourse is like “It turns out if you give women more choices, they’re less likely to make ones that make their lives harder.” Which is really helpful in figuring out how we can improve society somewhat. But instead people are like wow giving women more choices was a mistake

"Fake citations have turned into a nightmare for research librarians, who by some estimates are wasting up to 15 percent of their work hours responding to requests for nonexistent records that ChatGPT or Google Gemini alluded to." open access link: archive.ph/qt59c 2/🧵

AI Is Inventing Academic Papers That Don't Exist -- And They're Being Cited in Real Journals

Academic articles from authors using large language model are creating an ecosystem of fake research that threatens human knowledge itself.

rollingstone.com

our system of knowledge production is under attack from an extraordinary array of forces and if the people putatively on the side of maintaining it cannot commit to the most basic standards (not using fake citations, writing your own words, etc) I fear there is no hope

Dr. Holly Walters@manigarm.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I'm sorry, what? In writing my first monograph, I spent six weeks trying to track down a citation in TWO languages I didn't know. And good thing too, because the citation was wrong. That's scholarship. That's research. You know, the thing we're trained to do?!?

WHO has declared the #Ebola outbreak in DRC and Uganda a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). First time this has been done without consulting an emergency committee. Extraordinary move that speaks to how concerning the facts on the ground look right now

WHO@who.int · 3mo ago

Under the IHR (2005), @drtedros.who.int, the Director General of WHO, having consulted the States Parties where the event is occurring, has determined that the Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in DRC & Uganda constitutes a public health emergency of international concern bit.ly/3P4ZDac

I’ve been trying to understand what we know and don’t know so far about the concerning Ebola outbreak in DRC. Still lots of uncertainty at the moment but here‘s what I have been able to find out so far. Story is here (thread coming later): www.science.org/content/arti...

Major outbreak of rare Ebola virus species in northern Congo alarms scientists

No vaccines exist for Ebola Bundibugyo, which has caused 80 suspected deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and one in Uganda

science.org

"From a standpoint of transmission, every person does not pose the same risk, and that point has been missed." www.cidrap.umn.edu/misc-emergin...

Osterholm on hantavirus: We’re missing ‘main point of this outbreak’

cidrap.umn.edu

For all the pandemic deniers out there: "COVID-19 pandemic inflicted a setback of historic proportions. An estimated 22.1 million excess deaths occurred between 2020 and 2023, with nearly a decade of gains in life expectancy & healthy life expectancy wiped out by 2021" iris.who.int/server/api/c...

The drug, ensitrelvir, “blocks an enzyme that coronaviruses need to make new copies of themselves, hitting the same target as one of the two active ingredients in [Paxlovid]. But whereas that ingredient, nirmatrelvir, failed to prevent household infections in trials, ensitrelvir has come through.”

At last, a pill that can prevent COVID after exposure to infected people

Drug arrives years after pandemic’s peak, but could still offer protection to vulnerable populations.

nature.com

OUR NEW BMJ editorial: Andes virus should reset WHO’s default approach to airborne risk. 🧵 1/ For severe pathogens with person-to-person transmission, the starting point should be precautionary airborne protections — not waiting for definitive proof after spread occurs. www.bmj.com/content/393/...

This is exactly why language matters: “women were given the vote” frames equality as a gift from men, instead of hard won political power extracted through organized resistance. Nobody gave women anything. Women fought, marched, strategized, endured violence, went to prison and died for it.

JC: GenAI can now produce realistic but fake photos. Image tools cannot reliably detect those images. If we cannot prove that something is fake, maybe we should prove that something is real. mikhoelias.substack.com/p/how-ai-bre... #WCRI2026

How AI Breakthrough Could Shake the Scientific Publishing Process

Recent Image generation and LLM models are so good they can produce digital assets nearly undistinguishable from genuine ones.

mikhoelias.substack.com

The Trump administration removed the entire board of the National Science Foundation last week without explaining why. @ryanequinn.bsky.social @insidehighered.com dug around and found out: www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Board Ouster Raises Further Concerns About NSF’s Future

The White House axed all members of the board overseeing the National Science Foundation Friday, leaving the agency with no board, director or deputy director. It finally provided a reason Monday afte...

insidehighered.com

NHS data should be driving innovation & improvement – it’s an amazing resource We just published the sequel to our 2021 "Road to Hell" paper on using NHS data for research... things are worse! Buckle up for a long 🧵about *how COMPLETELY mad* system is for accessing NHS data for research 1/20

"Kennedy says the children are getting obsolete shots with dangerous ingredients that the U.S. has long since phased out. He is holding up $600 million Congress appropriated for the vaccines to pressure the international humanitarian group, Gavi, that distributes them."

RFK Jr. is holding up $600M in vaccines for poor countries

The distributor of the shots said it would cost tens of thousands of lives.

politico.com

🆕 What motivates Aussie adults to get their flu vax? Most want to be vaccinated and trust in healthcare professionals has risen, but cost and appointment access remain barriers. 🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.an... @julieleask.bsky.social @sydney.edu.au @publichealthaus.bsky.social

The skills the market had dismissed turned out to be the ones the machines could not do. Judgement. Interpretation. The ability to read between the lines of something that presents itself as neutral. The capacity to hold two contradictory ideas[.] theslowai.substack.com/p/why-humani...

The Humanities Are the Moat

Twenty years of defunding the disciplines that teach judgement. Now we are surprised nobody can tell when AI is wrong.

theslowai.substack.com

Australia’s investment in sexual and reproductive health is delivering measurable results worldwide, with strong impact across Asia and the Pacific. Our latest analysis highlights the impact and why sustained leadership matters. Read more: https://gu.tt/3P3hJcs

"The results suggest that, in the first few months after vaccination (September–December 2025), this year’s vaccines were 53–55% effective against hospitalizations among the study’s population of adults without immune compromise." insidemedicine.substack.com/p/exclusive-...

Exclusive: Here's the Covid-19 vaccine paper the CDC censored.

RFK Jr. and the CDC’s top official, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, don’t want you to read this. That’s exactly why you should.

insidemedicine.substack.com

“The Washington Post reported last week that HHS has shelved a study CDC scientists were on the verge of publishing showing that this past winter the vaccines reduced the risk of needing emergency care or hospitalization for Covid by 50%.”