Reading Austen and listening to Rage Against The Machine. I see no contradiction here.
Rob Knell
@robknell.bsky.social
Evolutionary ecologist working on, amongst other things, mating systems and adaptation. Knows enough stats to be dangerous and inflicts R on the innocent. Takes photos of animals. Also running/triathlon/technical diving.
🧪 Medical professionals are losing the attention war on YouTube. In a 3,958-video sample, independent creators produced the lowest quality content but captured the highest viewership using exaggeration. #MedSky
The credibility paradox: clickbait, engagement, and information quality in YouTube’s medical ecosystem - npj Digital Medicine
npj Digital Medicine - The credibility paradox: clickbait, engagement, and information quality in YouTube’s medical ecosystem
nature.com
AlphaFold was always bait-and-switch; now Google confirms it. A hyper-narrow bioinformatrics model with actual science bolted on whose guesses can be experimentally checked was never a licence for socially-applied slop at scale, but it's done its job. Effort transferred to LLMs.
I’d say that in my field we don’t usually see aggressive questioning at conferences like what’s implied below. I think if someone has a real problem with someone’s talk they’d be expected to raise that in private rather than making a public attack.
Anjali Dayal@anjalikdayal.bsky.social · 4d agoI don’t really want to get into this with people who feel this way, but i don’t think this is a good thing! We don’t need to behave this way! It’s not healthy to approach academic discourse as an exercise in harshness!
Some osprey shots from near Rutland water last week. These birds were taking fish from a stocked trout pond so purists may wish to turn their noses up. #birds #ukbirds #ukwildlife #raptors
Why do some deep-sea anglerfish males become permanent parasites? This #ProcB study finds that parasitic males evolve when mating opportunities are rare. doi.org/10.1098/rspb... | #Evolution #TheoreticalBiology
My postdoc is coming to an end, so I'm looking for work! Let me know if you, or anyone you know, wants to hire a philosopher of biology/cognition with a knack for cross-disciplinary work, a focus on autonomy + agency, and experience writing for the broader public (10+ yrs in sci/tech journalism).
New research just dropped today that makes octopuses even weirder than they already are… let me explain🧵🧪🐙🐡🦑
Latest Terrible Lizards podcast is about billionaires buying fossils. Find us on your podcast app or watch us here: Who Should Own Dinosaur Fossils? The Gus T. rex Controversy youtu.be/TaLWBc-4vvE (with @davehone.bsky.social)
It's impressive how many ethical quandaries can be solved by asking yourself, "Would Weird Al be cool with this?"
Steven Santos@stevensantos.bsky.social · 2w agoGuess who had the integrity not to accept $1 million to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival last year?
Video from the field course we ran in December for our #MSc #Wildlife #Conservation students at @uniofhull.bsky.social
Conservation in action - MSc Wildlife Conservation | University of Hull
YouTube video by University of Hull
youtube.com
1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.
The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science
As a labor-augmenting technology, large language models (LLMs) have the potential to accelerate scientific activity across the research pipeline. But even if LLMs perform on par with human experts at ...
arxiv.org
Sunday evening at Bempton. A howling, cold Northerly was making it hard for the puffins to land so they were circling and making repeated attempts to get on the cliffs... making it easier to photograph them. #birds #ukbirds #ukwildlife #wildlife
AI slop degrading online citizen science databases :-( 🧪 #birds www.theguardian.com/environment/...
AI-altered images on birdwatching forums putting research at risk
Experts warn increase in enhanced photos on birding platforms creating fake sightings, threatening credibility of tool used by scientists
theguardian.com
Fascinating and depressing article about shenanigans and forgery in the dinosaur skeleton market. #dinosaurs #crime #Trex 🧪https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2026-t-rex-fossils-obsession
Billionaires’ T. Rex Obsession Has Turned Fossils Into Red-Hot Drama
As the battle for dinosaur bones heightens, paleontologists, collectors and auction houses navigate a Wild West market.
bloomberg.com
I talk a lot about the complexity of ocean conservation, and how real solutions can’t fit on a bumper sticker. Enter the Ocean Cleanup. Launched by a teenager giving a TED Talk, they claimed they were going to scoop all the plastic out of the ocean. 🧪🦑🌎
Why The Ocean Cleanup Hasn’t Solved the Plastic Pollution Crisis • The Revelator
Global problems are rarely solved by one person or invention. The Ocean Cleanup didn’t work, for the reasons experts said it wouldn’t. What can we learn from this?
therevelator.org
This is genuinely grotesque. Imagine the research this could fund. Imagine if the buyer chose to fund someone who is working on climate change mitigation instead. The world has problems, and we can solve them. But not if people spent $50m on a fuckin dinosaw www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Tyrannosaurus Rex most expensive dinosaur ever sold
The dinosaur skeleton, which roamed the planet 67 million years ago, was sold by Sotheby's in New York.
bbc.co.uk
Important and unique specimen most likely lost to science 🧪 Tyrannosaurus rex most expensive dinosaur ever sold www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Tyrannosaurus Rex most expensive dinosaur ever sold
The dinosaur skeleton, which roamed the planet 67 million years ago, was sold by Sotheby's in New York.
bbc.co.uk
...and quite probably lost to science forever.
Kate Wong@katewong.bsky.social · 3w agoSOLD for $50.1 million--a new record--to an unnamed buyer
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Hmmm. Given the sums of money involved surely there could be some part of the sale contract that obliges the buyer to fund and distribute hi-res 3D scans and CT scans of each part of the fossil, plus maybe a certain amount of scientific access to the original? 🧪
T. rex fossil could become most expensive dinosaur ever sold
A 67 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex will go on sale in New York with a pre-sale value of $30m.
bbc.co.uk
Sensible article about impact factors from @dev-journal.bsky.social. One further point is that since IF is an arithmetic mean of a strongly skewed distribution it is nearly useless for any sort of inference and in particular carries zero information about an individual paper in a journal. 🧪
Development@dev-journal.bsky.social · last mo.The elephant in the room: impact factor @amjeve.uk & @jamesbriscoe.bsky.social offer an honest look at impact factor trends in #DevBio, explain how Development serves its community, & make the case that sustaining developmental biology journals is a shared responsibility. doi.org/10.1242/dev....
Evolutionary rescue in a phage community! New paper from former PhD student, Sam Greenrod, with brilliant colleague @craigmaclean.bsky.social : academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...
Rapid adaptation accelerates competitive suppression in a parasite community
Abstract. Environmental stress leads to changes in community composition by altering competitive hierarchies and pushing taxa towards extinction. Parasites
academic.oup.com
0438 this morning, somewhere near Rutland Water. #Birds #UKBirds #Wildlife #WildlifePhotography #DeathToFish
Questionable journal spotting: what's wrong with their cover? Answer in the alt text 🧪
