Mark A. Hanson

@hansonmark.bsky.social

#NewPI interested in #immune #evolution, host #pathogen interactions, and #ScientificPublishing @ University of Exeter, UK. He/him. 🇨🇦

I have a pet theory about bluesky: there's actually a silent majority of people with concern, but ultimately a nuanced opinion on AI. But this crowd is generally too hesitant to express any excitement or wonder bc there will be a hard-and-fast backlash from the vocal anti-AI contingent. Kinda sucks

Under a Binface government, anyone who doesn’t accept human-made climate change as fact will be sent back to school, from Year 1 right the way to A Levels, to see if anything goes in the second time round. #VoteBinface

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Hi all, putting feelers out: folks looking for a job ASAP in the 🇬🇧 in Cornwall, or willing to move? Collaborating group hiring a couple roles with skills in any of: - insect injections (incl. gene edits) - machine learning for image analysis - experience with 🦋 a plus! Can email me at link below.

Discovery

experts.exeter.ac.uk

Hi all, putting feelers out: folks looking for a job ASAP in the 🇬🇧 in Cornwall, or willing to move? Collaborating group hiring a couple roles with skills in any of: - insect injections (incl. gene edits) - machine learning for image analysis - experience with 🦋 a plus! Can email me at link below.

Discovery

experts.exeter.ac.uk

13. Hence our dismal conclusion: rather than finding that LLMs free us to do a better job of what we were doing before they came along, they shift scientific incentives (and the playing field of academic competition) in ways that compel us to do more and more, faster and faster, less and less well.

My #ExE2026 conference post is now live! It was great chatting with attendees about their research and learning more about the field. Thanks again to the organisers @erikpostma.bsky.social, @btschirren.bsky.social, @blongdon.bsky.social, @ali--wilson.bsky.social, and @hansonmark.bsky.social!

PLOS One@plosone.org · 2w ago

Our Associate Editor @sarahjose.bsky.social reports back from #ExE2026 at @uniexecec.bsky.social. Key themes included microbiomes, ageing, behaviour, environmental change, long-term studies such as @soaysheep.bsky.social, and @plos.org focus area of Open Science. everyone.plos.org/2026/07/21/f...

"AI enthusiasts are telling the world that the remedies should all be easy to automate, creating the impression that journals can not only catch more errors but also do it more efficiently and cheaply. That’s not the reality for scientific publishing right now or likely in the future."

@jimbindon.bsky.social · 3w ago

A cautionary note for those seeking a shortcut to publication--from a very authoritative source.🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

As someone in the midst of hiring, I do really appreciate when someone uses CRediT author taxonomy. When the Author Contributions section says "X, Y, Z, performed experiments" in a paper with like... 7 figures spanning all kinds of experiments... please use CRediT! Low-key: I'm hiring. Email me!

Crossref@crossref.bsky.social · 3w ago

Think about the last paper you wrote 🤔 how many different roles were involved? And how many different roles did one contributor 🧑‍💻 take on? Explore how we've built multiple contributor roles and support for CRediT in Schema 5.5 🔗https://doi.org/10.64000/6xx3c-nmp80 #CrossrefUpdate #Schema55

An inevitable development for for-profit Open Access publishers is Fordism: automation & massification. If you earn money piece-rate for each paper you want to increase the flow of papers while minimizing cost. e.g. very low and *uniform* turnaround times at Frontiers and MDPI

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Michael Okun@michael-okun.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇

I had a great time at the 1st #ExE2026 conference! Lots of amazing talks spanning genetics, behaviour, ecology and evolution 🐤 I presented a poster about the effects of sublethal pesticide exposure on cricket behaviour. The paper is in the final stages of review, so hopefully more to share soon 🦗🤞

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12/Editors and journals hold enormous influence over careers and over what science becomes part of the published literature. That influence comes with responsibility, and it can drive great scientists away from science. To fellow #ECRs: do not be afraid to raise concerns when something feels wrong.

You know when you're deep into dissecting a mechanism for your project, and you've thrown everything at it and it still is not that? I call it "The Magic Gnome principle": there's maybe a invisible property or phenomenon yet to be discovered that's messing with it. This is a Magic Gnome 🧪

Alexey Amunts@amunts.bsky.social · last mo.

RNA can build. A short RNA self-assembles into a 60-subunit icosahedral cage like a viral capsid, but made entirely of RNA. The striking preprint also reveals a 57-nt RNA filament at ~2.7 Å. Congratulations, Lin Huang and colleagues! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I routinely see kids products that come in the 2 options "Dinosaur" or "Unicorn"- which apart from the obvious, annoys me because one gets science and one gets mythology. This could easily be fixed by swapping dinosaurs with dragons, or, hear me out, aggressively marketing Cambrian sea life to girls

Day 2 of #ExE2026 ! Thank you to all our sponsor journals. I am proud to say ExE is sponsored strictly by society and non-profit journals! 👌📄 A huge thanks to our journal sponsors (see next post), who take their APC revenue and use it to support the sci communities like ExE ❤️ 1/2

A photo of the help desk from day 1 with organisers and volunteers standing around getting ready for the day.The ExE logo of 2026. A Chough silhouette is underlaid the ExE text, with faded genetic sequence in the background.

Day 2 of #ExE2026 ! Thank you to all our sponsor journals. I am proud to say ExE is sponsored strictly by society and non-profit journals! 👌📄 A huge thanks to our journal sponsors (see next post), who take their APC revenue and use it to support the sci communities like ExE ❤️ 1/2

A photo of the help desk from day 1 with organisers and volunteers standing around getting ready for the day.The ExE logo of 2026. A Chough silhouette is underlaid the ExE text, with faded genetic sequence in the background.

A few more days until the start of #ExE2026, the new evolutionary ecology 🧬✖️🌳 conference hosted @uniexecec.bsky.social in #Cornwall: 230 participants, 25 countries, 3 plenaries, 10 keynotes, 70 talks and over 100 posters. Also excursions, workshops, dinner, great swag and sea shanties 🎶 🤩 evoxeco.uk

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Erik Postma@erikpostma.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Interested in the interface of evolution 🧬 and ecology 🌳? Then you cannot miss #ExE2026! Hosted by @uniexecec.bsky.social in beautiful #Cornwall, this #conference has a stellar line-up of speakers and lots of pre-and post-conference workshops. Space is limited, so register now at evoxeco.uk!

ExE 2026