Scientific fashions, perfectionisms, and the value of traditional morphological taxonomy. #evolbio #philsci 🧪 waynemaddison.wordpress.com/2026/07/16/s...

Scientific fashions, perfectionisms, and the value of traditional morphological taxonomy

Like any conversation, science goes through wave after wave of fashion. One decade, it will be all the rage to study one type of question, and to shun sloppiness of one kind but tolerate another. A…

waynemaddison.wordpress.com

A White House report has defended the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, pushing back against its characterization by a Smithsonian Institution exhibit that the law was racially motivated. www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...

White House Defends 1882 Immigration Law Excluding Chinese Immigrants

The Trump administration is defending the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act against the charge that the law had a racist intent.

forbes.com

NEW from me in @pnas.org on the risks of data sharing with qualitative research: "Today, confidentiality risks are amplified by social media, surveillance, and AI tools, which make ample data about people publicly available, thus making deidentification less effective" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

📣 The difference between replicable and not replicable is not itself scientifically replicable. 📣 New work with Erkan Buzbas, showing that verdicts such as "X% of results replicated" are based on an inferential machinery that doesn't work. arxiv.org/abs/2604.26268

Today, we are sharing our newest report, "Licensing Best Practices for Sharing Scientific Data", which extends the open data practices originally designed for climate data in our 2023 report "Recommended Best Practices for the Better Sharing of Climate Data" to other disciplines. buff.ly/mkmMe2S

Licensing Best Practices for the Sharing of Scientific Data - Creative Commons

Creative Commons publishes the report Licensing Best Practices for Sharing Scientific Data, a guide for researchers and data producers.

creativecommons.org

BREAKING: In response to huge cuts in Trump's budget request, NSF is shuttering its SBE directorate. Staff will be transferred to other parts of the agency and "grants that align with Administration priorities" will be maintained. That & more w/ @maxkozlov.bsky.social & @edwrdchen.bsky.social

Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration

Budget proposal would also curb federal payments for scientific publishing.

nature.com

Lots to unpack in the FY27 budget proposal but an interesting one under DOE (p. 17): "The Budget prohibits the use of Federal funds for expensive subscriptions to academic journals and prohibitively high publishing costs unless required by Federal statute or approved in advance by a Federal agency."

👋 Back for #FossilFriday with more data on where/what new species get published! Updated data and scripts: github.com/bryanmgee/ne... Nature/Science: ⬆️in coverage through 1995 PNAS: 🆕, new species through 2000 Current Bio: 🆕, new species through 2006 Palaeontology: 🆕, new species through 2010 🧵👇

Bryan Gee@koskinonodon.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Last week, amidst the hoopla over a new Speen, @fishfetisher.bsky.social suggested a review of naming papers in fancy journals in response to a post by @daveyfwright.bsky.social - I got bored after work and now I have (some) data! 🧵👇 #FossilFriday #CharismaticTaxaAreOverrated

Last week, amidst the hoopla over a new Speen, @fishfetisher.bsky.social suggested a review of naming papers in fancy journals in response to a post by @daveyfwright.bsky.social - I got bored after work and now I have (some) data! 🧵👇 #FossilFriday #CharismaticTaxaAreOverrated

a close up of a dinosaur 's head with green eyes

Alt: a close up of a Spinosaurus head with green eyes from Jurassic Park

media.tenor.com

Emily Troyer@fishfetisher.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Someone should do a review to see what taxa descriptions most commonly get published in those top journals

Very sad to hear about the passing of Hans Sues. I was always impressed with Hans' breadth across Tetrapoda and his enthusiasm, but he was just a really nice guy above anything else. He was very patient and kind to me as a nervous grad student when handling my first MS, which I have never forgotten.

Darren Naish@tetzoo.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Oh no. Hearing (via Neil Shubin) that Hans Sues has passed. Woah.

Looks like it's that time of the year to pull this out again (with updated speen art) #FossilFriday #TemnospondylsDidItBetter

Guess we're about to find out how many people checked the author list before fanboying over an overrated dinosaur

What stood out to me is that SVP calls its Ethics Committee "independent." That committee is chaired by the VP of SVP (vertpaleo.org/protocols-fo...), who I don't know personally & have only heard good things about, but who also has a B.S. from Montana St. and who was an undergrad in Horner's lab

Skye McDavid@skyemcdavid.com · 6mo ago

SVP has finally put out the statement they should have put out 9 days ago, instead of the disgraceful one they put out originally. This is better, but it's not enough. If SVP wants to regain its members' trust without increasing transparency, we need to see results, not promises.

The FAA is closing the airspace around El Paso International Airport in Texas for 10 days, grounding all flights to and from the airport, for “special security reasons." The FAA's notice did not provide additional details.

FAA closes airspace around El Paso, Texas, for 10 days, grounding all flights

The Federal Aviation Administration is closing the airspace around El Paso International Airport in Texas for 10 days, grounding all flights to and from the airport.

bit.ly

I have nothing of substance to add re: the condemnation of paleo associations with Epstein, but as the initiator of one of the more recent high-profile SVP ethics cases who spent months going through their process, I have some thoughts re: SVP's handling of ethics cases/reports. A thread 🧵:

Dr. Win@paleowin.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Really SVP? You’re just going to ignore decades of sexual and academic misconduct, marrying a student AT one of your conferences, and every report I’ve filed (implying that’s what you do with reports) to defend famous Horner? You’d rather have pedophiles than students is your message?

A number of responders were quite opposed to the idea of giving ridealongs to The Atlantic (I understand their frustration with the outlet). But I drove these guys around for two hours and they witnessed abductions, confrontations with the public, tear-gassings. The lesson: let the world see.

David Brauer@dbrauer.net · 6mo ago

The Atlantic Magazine just dropped a tremendous story on the Minnesota Resistance. The author is a war correspondent & sees the echoes of leaderless community empowerment around the globe: www.theatlantic.com/politics/202... (supposed to be a gift link, might not work, it’s in Apple News, too.)

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

Hmong man detained by ICE today in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Photo via Reuters)

On Wednesday, Renee Macklin Good was fatally shot by a federal ICE agent. Becca Good, her wife, shared the following statement with MPR News.

Renee Macklin Good’s wife says she ‘nurtured kindness’

On Wednesday, Renee Macklin Good was fatally shot by a federal ICE agent. Becca Good, her wife, shared the following statement with MPR News.

mprnews.org

It’s not about drugs. If it was, Trump wouldn’t have pardoned one of the largest narco traffickers in the world last month. It’s about oil and regime change. And they need a trial now to pretend that it isn’t. Especially to distract from his sinking under Epstein and skyrocketing healthcare costs.

President Trump claimed overnight that the United States carried out airstrikes in Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro.

U.S. hit Venezuela with 'large-scale strike,' captured Nicolás Maduro, Trump says

President Trump claimed overnight that the United States carried out airstrikes in Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro.

n.pr

The yearly round-up of #temnospondyl research from the past year for the first #FossilFriday post of the year: once again, a lot of stuff on European taxa but also a great mix of researchers involved in all sorts of interesting work! 🧵👇 (1/25ish?) #temnospondyls #fossils #histology #anatomy

NEWS: The Institute of Museum & Library Services has restored ALL previously canceled federal grants to libraries, following a ruling by a federal judge in Rhode Island last month. This is a massive win for libraries & communities in every state & territory! Learn more: www.ala.org/news/2025/12...

Please Donate to the Internet Archive. $25 helps.... a lot. Useful to Journalists, Useful to Students, Useful to more than 2 million people a day. Collections growing at 150TBytes/day @internetarchive archive.org/donate www.cnn.com/2025/11/16/b...

5️⃣/🔟 In Scientific Reports, 5 of the top 10 most cited articles have an article number of 1. 5️⃣/🔟 In Nature Communications the same: 5 of the top 10 are article 1s. Coincidence? 👇 scirate.com/arxiv/2511.0... I think not.

Bad AI supplanting human expertise is an issue that transcends any one field, but man—not many people on earth whose knowledge and dedication deserves respect like LIBRARIANS.

Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 9mo ago

The long-running ideological war on libraries, education, and government workers is not separate from AI boosterism. It is the same ideological war on human knowledge and expertise. In some cases AI is being used to directly supercharge this effort: www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

One of the largest temmnospondyls ever to exist: the gigantic Koolasuchus was also the last non-lissamphibian temnospondyl to exist. It survived into the Early Cretaceous of Australia when all other stereospondyls were long gone #temnospondyls #paleoart

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-... 🧵

The official home of the Python Programming Language

python.org

🦎THREAD: We just published something wild in @asn-amnat.bsky.social - lizards missing entire limbs not only survive, but some appear to actually thrive in the wild?! Let me tell you about the "three-legged pirate" lizards 🏴‍☠️ [Paper: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... ] (1/n)

www.wsj.com/us-news/educ... UT Austin is one of the 9 schools offered a deal: accede to White House demands and get funding priority

Exclusive | White House Asks Colleges to Sign Sweeping Agreement to Get Funding Advantage

An initial round of nine schools is being asked to sign a wide-ranging accord.

wsj.com