Magdalena Skipper
@magdalenaskipper.bsky.social
Editor in Chief of Nature, geneticist, editor, accidental potter. All views my own
Controversial White House plan to overhaul US science funding faces Senate opposition www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪 #academicSky
Controversial White House plan to overhaul US science funding faces Senate opposition
Proposal to put political appointees in charge of research grants could be temporarily halted if lawmakers’ efforts are successful.
nature.com
Four years only - international PhD students to face strict limits on time in the US 🧪 #academicSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...
International PhD students to face strict limits on time in the US
Trump administration takes action to address ‘forever students’.
nature.com
In this week’s editorial we lift the curtain on how the cover of Nature comes together - the iconic front page uses inspiration, creativity and ingenuity to unite science and technology with art and design. But it’s not always been like this… @nature.com 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Celebrating Nature’s covers — past, present and future
Nature’s iconic front page uses inspiration, creativity and ingenuity to unite science and technology with art and design.
nature.com
If like me you’ve yet to see the film, this will be a nice read to make you appreciate things you might otherwise miss… What The Odyssey reveals about ancient science — from botany to psychiatry 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
What The Odyssey reveals about ancient science — from botany to psychiatry
From intelligent ships to clues about eclipses, Homer’s The Odyssey reveals how Bronze Age Greeks understood the world.
nature.com
‘Authorship gymnastics’? This is exceptionally worrying if the answer the question posed in the title of this story is true 🧪 #academicSky www.science.org/content/arti...
Did U.S. scrutiny of foreign research drive prominent geneticist to decline authorship?
George Church moved to paper’s acknowledgements section, triggering exodus
science.org
‘Humanizer’ - a new tool that can erase signs of AI-written text in research papers and grant proposals. Time to be very concerned. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
‘Humanizer’ tool can erase signs of AI-written text — alarming scientists
Tool directs text-generation systems to remove constructions associated with artificial intelligence in research papers and grant proposals.
nature.com
Dementia incidence is growing. Studies have looked at protective effects of diet, exercise & socializing & find that the effects are small. Some environmental changes are beyond individual control, others have to start early in life. But small may be good enough… 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
How to avoid dementia — what the science really says
Ambitious studies have been examining the protective effects of diet, exercise and socializing — with surprising results.
nature.com
From cloning to gene-editing: the enduring legacy of Dolly the sheep lives on, 30 years after her birth 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
From cloning to gene-editing: the enduring legacy of Dolly the sheep
Dolly’s brush with celebrity could hold lessons for current discussions about reproductive technologies.
nature.com
‘A society that loses science loses the future’ says Neil Shubin, as he starts his tenure as the NAS President @neilshubin.bsky.social - thank you for speaking to us @nature.com 🧪 #AcademicSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Incoming US science academy chief vows to ‘double down’ on research
New leader of the National Academy of Sciences Neil Shubin warns: ‘a society that loses science loses the future’.
nature.com
Too many of us repeat the statement that trust in science is falling. Is it really the case? The data don’t support this conclusion in a straight forward way. Science may have an influence & comms problem more than a trust problem, in fact… but it’s complex 👇🏻 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Have people stopped trusting science? The data tell a surprising story
Some say there’s a global crisis of trust — but research reveals where the real problems lie.
nature.com
How are we going to manage? Not to mention the rest of the ecosystem… 🧪 @nature.com Coffee is under threat: how scientists are fighting to save it from extinction www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Coffee is under threat: how scientists are fighting to save it from extinction
Coffee plants are critically endangered by climate change. Researchers are finding solutions to keep scientists supplied with their favourite discovery fuel.
nature.com
Welcome to Mars! Your goal in this game by the Nature team is to glow up the barren, icy red planet and turn it into a warmer green world capable of supporting a human settlement 🧪 Proceed here www.nature.com/immersive/d4... @nature.com
Europe’s record heatwave: does the continent have a new climate? 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Europe’s record heatwave: does the continent have a new climate?
Nature asks researchers whether scorching summers are the new norm for London, Paris and Berlin.
nature.com
Brexit tore apart European science — 10 years after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, there are signs that their relationship in research is healing #AcademicSky A news story by @lizziegibney.bsky.social for @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Brexit tore apart European science — now the research rifts are healing
The UK’s share of EU research funding is climbing, but lost networks will be harder to recover.
nature.com
The World’s Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes When making a fake is cheap and quick but detecting it is costly and slow, the world is in big trouble. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/u...
The World’s Leading Deepfake Expert No Longer Trusts His Own Eyes
nytimes.com
What happens in the frontotemporal cortex during language production? Turns out distinct neurons represent detailed grammatical relationships between words & others track the sentences’ higher-order syntactic structure, phrase transitions & sequence @nature.com 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Mapping the neuronal building blocks of human language with language models - Nature
Wide-scale recordings reveal neurons in the human brain that encode fundamental components of language such as the grammatical relationships between words, their parts of speech and the...
nature.com
Should nicotine be regulated like a narcotic? The Republic of Palau wants the UN to add nicotine to a list of substances it regulates, which include narcotics & psychotropic drugs such as amphetamines 🧪 #MedSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Should nicotine be regulated like a narcotic? A Pacific nation makes the case
Existing global efforts to reduce harms caused by smoking have targeted tobacco smoking, but vapes containing nicotine are also harmful.
nature.com
As the biggest sporting event kicks off, we’ve looked at how FIFA is using science in this year’s tournament. From AI-generated 3D avatars, to footballs with sensors, to real-time sensors to provide match analytics… #worldcup2026 Story by @marilenharo.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...
This World Cup could be the most high-tech yet — the innovations to watch for
Nature asked a football-journal chief about emerging trends in the sport, from AI tools to PhD students embedded with teams.
nature.com
Revealed - Five winning images of scientists at work from Nature’s 2026 photo competition. Note the very few lab coats 😉 🧪 #academicSky @nature.com www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
Five winning images of scientists at work
From sky to sea, and then back to the lab, here are the top images from Nature’s 2026 photo competition.
nature.com
I’ve been looking at this cover all week! There is so much here - it takes day of the dead iconic image & mixes it with elements of sub-cellular architecture. What can you spot? You can read the paper is illustrates about transcriptomic clocks here www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪 @nature.com
Landmark cancer trial shows success against pancreatic cancer, often described as undruggable. The experimental drug, daraxonrasib, disarms all three members of the RAS family of proteins, which are notoriously difficult to target #MedSky 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Landmark cancer trial shows success against ‘undruggable’ cancer — raising hopes for future treatments
Unprecedented results against a stubbornly hard-to-treat cancer are boosting optimism that other challenging tumours will be next.
nature.com
Does science have an age problem? @economist.com highlights a new study in @science.org that looks that why science is becoming less innovative economist.com/graphic-deta... 🧪 #academicSky
Why science is becoming less innovative
A huge study suggests ageing scientists are part of the problem
economist.com
I am very happy that we are expanding Registered Reports to all disciplines in which we publish, which is all areas of natural, clinical and social sciences, engineering & public health. We’ve learned a lot since 2023 when we first invited RRs; we are ready to expand 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Nature is expanding Registered Reports to all the fields in which we publish
Registered Reports improve the credibility of scientific claims by rewarding big questions, sound methods and solid analyses. They need to become a standard tool in research.
nature.com
Daniel Lakens@lakens.bsky.social · 2mo agoExcellent news! Nature is expanding Registered Reports to all the fields in which they publish! A great result by all those proposing this strong solution to publication bias and selective reporting (and getting expert feedback before data collection)! www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Wearable robot boosts strength of children with spinal muscular atrophy Original research published in our pages, in Nature www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪 #MedSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Wearable robot boosts strength of children with spinal muscular atrophy
The device helps muscle recovery in those receiving gene therapy for the rare neuromuscular condition.
nature.com
Tough peer-review process? Your paper might end up being more highly cited 🧪 #AcademicSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Tough peer-review process? Your paper might end up being more highly cited
An AI-led analysis of publicly available peer-review reports links requests for major revisions with papers that end up having high impact.
nature.com
Infectious diseases such as hantavirus & Ebola becoming more frequent & damaging, according to the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board Pandemic risk, amplified by climate change & conflict, is outpacing investments in preparedness 🧪 #MedSky www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
Infectious diseases such as hantavirus and Ebola becoming more frequent and damaging, say experts
Pandemic report warns of growing global threat as health teams in Africa move to contain Ebola outbreak
theguardian.com
Nature has learnt that a WHO-sponsored clinical trial of two experimental treatments for Ebola Bundibugyo virus disease is in the works, pending approval by the governments of DRC and Uganda 🧪 #MedSky www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Exclusive: Race begins to trial Ebola drugs amid current outbreak
Clinical trials for treatments against Ebola Bundibugyo virus are ‘in a strong position’ to be launched quickly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.
nature.com
Mental-health research urgently needs prominence & funding attention. Together with @wellcometrust.bsky.social we’ve just launched the largest award of its kind - Wellcome Prize for mental health science with Nature 🧪 Apply here 👇🏻 www.nature.com/immersive/we... www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Mental-health research is too often invisible — it is time to change that
Mental illness needs visibility more urgently than almost any other area of medicine and health care. A new award from Wellcome and Nature aims to raise its prominence.
nature.com
Short (<6 h) & long (>8 h) sleep, compared with a normal sleep (6–8 h), are associated with increased risk of systemic diseases & all-cause mortality, with evidence from genetic correlations & time-to-incident survival predictions, such as depression & diabetes 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Sleep chart of biological ageing clocks in middle and late life - Nature
A cross-organ, multi-omics U-shaped relationship between sleep duration and biological ageing clocks highlights the potential of sleep optimization to promote healthy ageing, lower disease risk and ex...
nature.com
