John Enders, who discovered a method to culture poliovirus, allowing vaccines to be developed, said there was a clear lesson to be learned from the failure: “We must never again allow decisions about essentially scientific matters to be made for us by people without training or insight.” 2/2

I‘m far from an AI doomer, but it is amazing how many serious voices — on LinkedIn, no less! — are sharing stories about how AI slop is quickly becoming one of the top problems they see in academic writing and research “AI will 10x our research!” doesn’t seem to be surviving encounters with reality

Tell me again about your "warfighting"?

“I trust my immune system. I don’t need a vaccine.” Ok, I trust mine to protect me too. Which is why I trained it extensively on what the virus looks like so it can handle it. Boxers don’t enter the ring without a plan. It’s the punch you don’t see coming that knocks you out.

I'm so used to other drivers being distracted by their phones, it was weirdly old-timey and charming this morning when the guy in front of me didn't realize the light had turned green because he was so intently rubbernecking a cute girl crossing the street.

Review of applicants will begin August 31.

Erin Purcell@erinpurcell.bsky.social · last wk.

My department is hiring a lecturer (permanent position, not adjunct) in forensic chemistry, who will develop and teach classes towards our new forensic chemistry degree. Please repost, and message me if you have any questions! jobs.odu.edu/postings/26950

My department is hiring a lecturer (permanent position, not adjunct) in forensic chemistry, who will develop and teach classes towards our new forensic chemistry degree. Please repost, and message me if you have any questions! jobs.odu.edu/postings/26950

Jesus fucking Christ covid vax REDUCED miscarriages and stillbirths. Also I'm one of the people who studied menstrual side fx of the covid vax to make sure we didn't invalidate peoples' real experiences, and to better set expectations for side fx. Ultimately the project made me even MORE provax!

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last wk.

Fox News, with an assist from NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, is trying to blame Fauci and covid vaccines for miscarriages

Folks seeking to divest from Canvas - are you going completely old school (paper only syllabus, assignments, etc) or have you worked out a hybrid plan? Can anyone point me to resources that will surveil me and my students less?

Ugh, tell you you don't think parents (moms) should work outside the home without explicitly saying it... A 5-fold increase in well-child visits is incompatible with getting anything else done ever.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last wk.

Trump: "At one year, you should have 5 separate visits for vaccines rather than getting them all in the same day. I've seen proof of where they have a vaccination thing that looks like the size of a bottle of soda and pour it into a little child's body."

Pls share: Three open posions in Bacteriology at Wisconsin: bact.wisc.edu/bacteriology...

Bacteriology is Hiring!

Bioeconomy Assistant Professor The Department of Bacteriology is seeking applicants at the Assistant Professor level to launch a research program in the New Bioeconomy. Applicants may be interested in...

bact.wisc.edu

I wrote about a reason not to use generative AI in your writing that I haven't seen anyone talking about. Once I realized this, banning GenAI in our lab's writing became a no-brainer. Feel free to share, I think this is probably useful especially for trainees: www.carlsonlab.bio/thoughts/the...

The only reason you’ll ever need not to write with AI — The Carlson Lab

Over the last year, our lab has been developing a policy on AI use. To do this, we did three main things: We read a lot of academic publications and tech news. We set up an #ai channel on our la...

carlsonlab.bio

I love that seemingly ANYTHING can be a meaningful bacterial signal in the right context

Kumaran Ramamurthi@ramamurthilab.bsky.social · 2w ago

Biofilm formation in #Bacillus subtilis is thought to precede sporulation, but T. Updegrove says that a subpopulation of sporulating cells triggers other cells to become biofilm formers via an intracellular metabolite (glycerol) repurposed as a signaling molecule (!) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Of those 50 parks I've been to even briefly, I've actively spent time in or enjoyed maybe 10, which works out to 3% of the parks in my city. So my tax dollars are subsidizing a benefit I will never use. And that's good.

I actually had no idea the name came from a person (a really cool person!).

c0nc0rdance@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 3w ago

The headlines are still covering the cyclosporiasis outbreak from lettuce, but let's talk about a different summer, long ago. The headlines in Bavaria would have called it "summer diarrhea" & it was killing babies. Enter our hero, Professor Theodor Escherich of the Julius Hospital, Würzburg.

Damn, Willa, what did I ever do to you?

eileen chengyin chow@chowleen.bsky.social · 3w ago

"When the first of August came round, the Professor realized he had pleasantly trifled away nearly two months at a task which should have taken little more than a week." -Willa Cather (from The Professor's House, 1925)

I’m astonished by the ability of my fellow humans to forget the events we all just lived through. Folks remember the masks and the remote school. The million US dead are rarely mentioned. Folks, we lived through a plague.

Let’s be clear here, when scientists say mistakes were made at the start of the pandemic, we DO NOT mean that we did too much. We mean not socially distancing quickly enough, not making tests widely available, and not acknowledging COVID is airborne and distributing N95 masks to everyone.

It's July 25, the anniversary of the fall of fascism in Italy, so, in town squares everywhere, people are gathering to eat "anti-fascist pasta", a tradition started by a family who fed their village to celebrate on the day. It's a lovely communal affair with partisan songs. The food was delicious!

Ireland looked fast when it finally happened, but I think of the 30 years of slog that led up to 20 years of victories—and the magnitude of abuse scandals needed to first loosen authority’s grip. It will take a lifetime to repair what’s happened in the U.S. and U.K. in the last ten years.

Today's breakthroughs rest on yesterday's curiosity-driven science. This is why these arguments matter. It has long been understood that every transformative technology ultimately traces back to fundamental discoveries made years or decades earlier through basic research. 2/3

Once more for the folks who joined late: Food safety is a food waste issue,

Stone Cold Jane Austen@abbyhiggs.bsky.social · 4w ago

New contamination just dropped

I just saw a meme that said “get in losers, we’re reclaiming the emdash”. People. PEOPLE. Where are your STANDARDS? It CLEARLY should be “get in, losers — we’re reclaiming the em dash.”

the best day for the presidents of every R1 to hold a press conference screaming that higher ed is our second largest export and destroying it is economic sabotage and soft power detonation was Jan 21st 2025. the next best day is tomorrow.

Anna Kornbluh@annakornbluh.bsky.social · 4w ago

a bad thing is running a phd program with brilliant international students who must reckon with a volatile xenophobic saboteur government in fresh ways every day, no thank you, 0/10

See also. Good work, Congress.

Burrito Justice@burritojustice.bsky.social · last mo.

“[the Food Traceability Rule] was supposed to be in force on Jan 20 of this year. FDA proposed pushing it to July 2028, and Congress made that stick. Had it been operating, the 27-state distribution list and the real names behind those 8 codes would have been in FDA's hands in a day — in May”

I really hope that people in positions of reviewing the tenure files of colleagues think about the EXTRAORDINARY amount of labor that GenAI has added.

Step 2: Now email the comment you submitted in opposition to the OMB rule to your Senators and Congressional Representative. Tell them why you submitted and urge them to fight Vought!

As OMB is working through comments WE NEED YOU! Use our action center to CONTACT CONGRESS INCESSANTLY: Fight2win.standupforscience.net Call, Email, sign up to volunteer and we can contact you with virtual constituent meeting opportunities. 3/

Stand up for Science

Stand up for Science

fight2win.standupforscience.net

If you want to reduce crime rates, don’t invest in policing. Invest in libraries.

Crux of my longer comment: The proposed changes would kneecap intellectual and scientific infrastructure that took decades to develop. The damage would be immense—if we do this to ourselves, we will spend the next few decades trying to rebuild what was destroyed instead of developing anything new.

Erin Purcell@erinpurcell.bsky.social · last mo.

Submitted my comment today, close to the deadline but not too late! I used my full name but you can also comment anonymously. arstechnica.com/science/2026...