For an update on our preprint about the mysterious signature SBS5, see: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... New analyses throughout, but see Figure 5 in particular.

Feels like this paper on protein-templated DNA synthesis by a natural enzyme warrants some comment.
So here's a 🧵. /1
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Great summary by @philipcball.bsky.social! Our findings certainly don’t invalidate the central dogma, but rather demonstrate an unexpected (and cool!) structural mechanism by which a sequence-specific DNA is created in a cell. (1/6)

We already KNOW how to make super babies, you eugenicist creeps! And it's all the things you fucking fucks are fucking up! THREAD!

Oh, your tangents are never true tangents Lol. Always relevant. I (and we) read and reflect on all of it.

Thrilled to have been able to review 'The Paradox of the Organism: Adaptation and Internal Conflict', a volume edited by @arvidagren.bsky.social & Manus Patten.

"...the reality that complex organisms function at all feels like pure magic, with the powers of molecular evolution behind the curtain."

I had more to say as well! Looking forward to yours (as I do all of your writing).

Honored to have been able to engage with this new book (THE EDGE OF SPACE-TIME) by theoretical physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (@chanda.blacksky.app), recently published in Science Magazine (@science.org).

Graves reveal plague’s inequitable toll Most of the individuals in a seventeenth-century-Switzerland burial site had performed strenuous manual labour and died before the age of 20.

Most of the individuals in a seventeenth-century-Switzerland burial site had performed strenuous manual labour and died before the age of 20

go.nature.com/4tTj2tg

This is great work 👏 Really depressing but not at all surprising to find these kinds of autism-microbiome claims are not supported by data that would allow replication. (They're not even internally convincing anyway, as it happens)

Failure in Science: A Conference The Good Science Project welcomes you to its third research culture conference, themed on the issue of ‘failure in science’. The conference is a collaboration between Imperial’s Office of the Vice-Pro...

I'm really looking forward to this meeting on Failure in Science at Imperial College tomorrow. It's a topic we don't talk about enough.
www.imperial.ac.uk/events/20415...

🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

Who Gets Guggenheims? - Public Books Unfortunately, 100 years of data show that those whom such fellowships might represent the greatest departure from their everyday experience—that is, those not at elite institutions—are least likely t...

Woohoo, here's my essay with my fav co-author on 30,000 fellowship wins across the Guggenheim, Stanford CASBS, NAEd, National Humanities Center, RSF visiting scholar, and Harvard Radcliffe.

Spoiler: it's the people working at prestigious universities

www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-gug...

Semantic Network of OECS articles.

Reminder! The Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (OECS) hosts summaries of what we know vs don't about a host of fascinating issues. All freely available.

What a terrific alternative to doomscrolling: learning about (e.g.) The Mind-Body problem, Delusion, or Free Will.

oecs.mit.edu

😬

Very good article what it would take for AI to have "agency" and self-preservation goals (w/ a few quotes from me).

& I appreciate the reiterated debunking of the "GPT-4 on its own lied to a TaskRabbit worker to solve a captcha" story.

www.quantamagazine.org/why-do-we-te...

Image shows the title of the article, "The time has come for big changes to improve research funding", and the author, Peter Kolarz.

The competitive #researchfunding system is at breaking point. In our new Perspective, Peter Kolarz from @rorinstitute.bsky.social argues for whole system transformation, as innovations to address ongoing problems will not suffice.
🧪 #AcademicSky
plos.io/4mjCi0g

Wildlife trade drives animal-to-human pathogen transmission over 40 years

New in @science.org ‼️ In the most comprehensive study to date, we show that wildlife trade is driving animal-to-human zoonotic spillover at a planetary scale, with +1 spillover per host every 10 years. Live animal markets and illegal trade pose even greater risks. 🔓 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Very cool!

Disinformation as Cultural Narrative: Conceptualizing Disinformation as Cross-Platform, Identity-Affirming, Cathartic Stories Rather than framing disinformation as false facts which can be countered by true facts, we propose a model of disinformation as narrative by tracing three case studies of successful disinformation ...

🚨NEW DISINFO PAPER🚨 TLDR; disinformation circulates as narratives, not false facts. This paper took five years (!!!) and a rotating cast of collaborators and GRAs. Our case studies include the pee tape, and we have an entire appendix justifying that. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Title page for working paper: "The Varieties of Cultural Selection"

I've been thinking a lot about the foundations of cultural evolutionary theory. While there's been a lot of work on transmission mechanisms, there has been far less work on cultural *selection*. Here's a new working paper presenting a taxonomy of cultural selection processes.
osf.io/preprints/so...

Congratulations!!!

I am so very honored to receive this award from @sse-evolution.bsky.social, @asn-amnat.bsky.social , and @systbiol.bsky.social !!!

Revisiting the human sociobiology debate What have we learned 50 years on?

🚨 New, short article by myself, Clark Barrett and @kevinlala.bsky.social on the legacy of Wilson's 'Sociobiology: The New Synthesis', which was published 50 years ago.

@science.org #ehbea #histbiol #evobio #psyscisky

Revisiting the human sociobiology debate |Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

“I came away feeling a pleasant discomfort at how complicated the topic is, but enlightened all the same.”

Many thanks to @cbo.bsky.social for the kind review of The Paradox of the Organism.

Heritability is a statistical description of sources of trait variation in a specific set of people under a specific set of environmental conditions. It doesn’t show how malleable the trait is, doesn't index an underlying feature of human biology, & can’t say anything about you as an individual.

Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence Despite rising concerns about sycophancy—excessive agreement or flattery from artificial intelligence (AI) systems—little is known about its prevalence or consequences. We show that sycophancy is wide...

OK, I'm obsessed with this study in @science.org

It took Reddit "Am I The Asshole" posts & asked LLMs if the poster was the asshole. Aaand (surprise) AI was more likely to tell people they were NOT the asshole ... even when humans said yeah YTA 🧪

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Host-parasite coevolution leads to underwater respiratory adaptations in extreme diving insects, seal lice (Lepidophthirus macrorhini) - Communications Biology Seal lice survive deep-sea dives by closing spiracles, reducing oxygen use, and breathing through their skin. Genomic data suggest they store oxygen via haemoglobin, showing insects can adapt to extre...

Yes, seals have lice! Under water, lice close their spiracles and reduce their oxygen consumption to a minimum www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Science Communication Is Central to the Practice of Science Opinion | Explaining and defending knowledge is as essential to the scientific enterprise as publishing research.

New Op/Ed in Undark Magazine (@undark.org)

"...the authors of rigorous science communication products are conducting an essential activity of formal scientific practice, charged with transfiguring complex ideas and bringing them into the homes and minds of many."

undark.org/2026/03/26/o...

South Carolina’s Measles Outbreak Shows Chilling Effect of Vaccine Misinformation - KFF Health News When a measles outbreak emerged in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in October, health officials announced that most cases were tied to one public charter school, where only 17% of the 605 students enroll...

This #SABEW award also belongs to my colleague Lauren Sausser @kffhealthnews.org for her excellent reporting from South Carolina's measles outbreak. That single state is about to hit 1,000 cases.

kffhealthnews.org/news/article...