Fintan Burke
@fintanburke.com
Irish science journalist in Hamburg | Outreach for @esci.eu | President @eusja.org Sé/é. Big fan of the en-dash. Signal: fintanburke.01
Anyone involved in writing, reviewing, or even citing a research paper needs to read @katarinazimmer.bsky.social's phenomenal investigation piece on review mills, just published in @nature.com #academicsky 🧪 #sts #SciComm
‘A waste of time for all of us’: caught in the crossfire of the peer-review wars
Review mills — researchers who write fake referee reports with coercive citation requests — are setting off a war in academic publishing. What happens to those caught in the middle?
nature.com
Great story by @katarinazimmer.bsky.social & Victoria Uwemedimo congratulations on the award!
Knowable Magazine@knowablemag.bsky.social · last mo.🎊 We're delighted to share that Knowable Magazine’s work has won an award! “For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids,” by Victoria Uwemedimo and @katarinazimmer.bsky.social, placed first in the Multimedia category at the @soljourno.bsky.social awards.
You know you've spelled something badly when the 'suggested spellings' are words you have never heard of.
I still think they should have called it Beuro
Iain Roberts@slowbikeiain.bsky.social · 2mo agoEuropean alternative to Google Docs and Microsoft Office launches on 9 June: free, open source and online, using existing building blocks. An important step in freeing ourselves from US control. www.zdnet.com/article/euro...
The brightest minds in robotics have successfully engineered your uncle at a wedding.
Brugal Enthusiast 🇯🇲@knewyorksfinest.life · 3mo agoYO PLEASE WATCH THIS IM FUCKING SCREAMING
Proteins recovered from 400,000-year-old fossils show humans living today may have inherited genes from Homo erectus: "There’s far greater complexity in terms of hominins across Eurasia than previously recognized," says @york.ac.uk geochemist Kirsty Penkman. @science.org
Ghost of long-extinct ancestor lives on in people today
Ancient Homo erectus teeth from China yield protein variants seen in Denisovans—and us
science.org
Jogging on an empty stomach during peak barbeque time. I only have myself to blame.
After 15 years working with North Korean researchers on Mount Paektu, geophysicist James Hammond reflects on sanctions, science diplomacy and the risks of cutting scientific ties entirely:
Science diplomacy lessons from a North Korean volcano
Mount Paektu, a mythic, active volcano on the border between North Korea and China, is almost the epitome of a scientific challenge that crosses political lines. In 946 CE, it erupted in one of the…
buff.ly
Well done article from @us.theguardian.com on how the Trump administration's war on science and data is harming the American public. "Experts warn that Trump’s destruction of the country’s data infrastructure will have lasting impacts on all aspects of life..." www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
The Trump administration is deleting government data. From infant deaths to hunger, here are five ways it’s hurting Americans
This information was used to understand the problems Americans face. The consequences of its erasure, experts warn, could affect generations to come
theguardian.com
An opportunity to join the staff of The Economist
Wanted: a new tech-industry writer
An opportunity to join the staff of The Economist
econ.st
🧪How do you study microplastics when everything in your lab is also made of plastic? I spoke with researchers in Germany, Norway, the US and Australia about how they try their best to create plastic-free labs, from 100% cotton lab coats to (near) 100% steel laboratories. @cenmag.bsky.social
How do you study microplastics when they’re everywhere?
Microplastics are everywhere, which makes studying them all the more difficult. Labs are doing all they can to be plastic-free but have few common protocols
cen.acs.org
Many science journalists are concerned about plans to hold the profession's flagship international conference in China - a country that ranks 178th on the World Press Freedom Index www.science.org/content/arti...
Censorship and safety concerns cloud China’s plans to host science journalism conference
Organizers of the 2029 World Conference of Science Journalists defend Beijing meeting as opportunity to connect with Chinese scientists
science.org
Looking for sources for a Nature.com story about dealing with predatory 'pay-to-publish' magazines. They try to convince PhDs/academics to write for their high-impact magazine (read by business people, politicians etc), charging them thousands to do so. DMs open! #academicsky 🧪
Big shock - top universities in Europe's big cities & regions have no problem attracting students. But what about the universities in fringe areas with dwindling populations? I spoke with the researchers in some of those regions to see how they adapt. 🧪 #AcademicSky
Regional universities seek new ways to attract researchers
Universities and research programmes in many rural regions in Europe are being adversely affected by declining population numbers and brain drain. The...
universityworldnews.com
Google must have finally incorporated AI into Google Maps. How do I know? It just told me I needed to leave now to be at Dublin Airport by 13:30 now to catch 9am Citylink that arrives in Dublin Airport at 11am. Then I should take the 11:45 Kells bus to Ballymun and walk back one hour to the airport
As a science journalist looking through papers and being asked to 'Sign in through your institution" for two hours 🧪
Science-heads who are journalism-curious! This is one of the best internships imaginable. Many of its holders have gone on to great careers at The Economist. Please help spread the word. www.economist.com/science-and-...
The Economist’s science and technology internship
We invite applications for the 2026 Richard Casement internship
economist.com
Genuinely, the high cost of a subscription. You are paying for a quality product with high standards
Matt@tiredgenerally.bsky.social · 6mo agoi’m slightly curious as to why FT has stayed normal unlike much of the staff at their peer publications (not just in the UK but also specifically the UK)
Looking for sources for a @nature.com story about how researchers are coping in the midst of current events: If you're a PhD or other academic who's struggling to focus with everything that's happening in the world and would like to be interviewed for this story, please get in touch ASAP!
unbelievably, incredibly pleased to share with you that one of my oldest friends managed, with a straight face, to convince her partner that Jon Hamm was married to an Italian woman called Ana Mortadella
My hot take on Sinners: getting those 16 nominations is deserved because of the excellent work in each of those categories. Even if the film does not equal the whole sum of that work, it remains one of the year’s best. It deserved to break the nomination record.
Hello! I am sharing information about my @researchireland.ie project Locating Loss: histories of infertility in landscapes and spaces. I would love to connect with researchers/ practitioners from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines, so please share widely! Sharing again for morning Bluesky!
Looks like the LLMs powering AI chatbots have a bias against users who have a dialect. A study of German dialect speakers judged them as uneducated, angry farm workers. Similar studies exist for English dialects from places India, Ireland (😐) and Nigeria. My piece for Deutsche Welle 🧪
AI chatbots are 'alarmingly' biased against dialect speakers – DW – 12/29/2025
Don't speak perfect Oxford English? You may face "shocking" levels of discrimination when using large language models, researchers have found. New customized AI models could be the answer.
dw.com
