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Alex Diaz-Papkovich

@alexandr.bsky.social
747 followers 906 following 196 posts

Statistician and mathematician. Postdoc working on population genetics at the Data Science Institute at Brown University. UWaterloo, Carleton, and McGill alum. Skeets are my own. He/him. github.com/diazale

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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
never in doubt bsky.app/profile/tict...
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
experience leafs hockey
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depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
it blows my mind that these bizarre AI people think “the commons” is just sitting around for them to strip-mine for free
OpenAI "rogue" agent activities found on wikimedia projects. by selena deckelmann 5 october 2026
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
There's an interesting rhetorical trick where "making it harder to speed" is equated to "making it harder to drive". It's not! Driving slow is way easier than driving fast!
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Prof. Eliot Jacobson @climatecasino.net · 01/10/2026
Records come and records go. But this is one for the ages. The preliminary Nino 3.4 sea-surface temperature anomaly is now at a record 3.23°C above the 1991-2020 baseline. This crushes the previous daily record set in 1982 by over 1.14°C. The Climate 8-ball is looking up.
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Emily Moin @emilymoin.com · 30/09/2026
oh
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C. Brandon Ogbunu @cbo.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
In my latest for @undark.org, I compare AI adoption in science to the Ship of Theseus: "If you swap out every wooden plank on a ship over time, is it still the same vessel?" I argue that science derives authority from something more than data generation + publication. undark.org/2026/09/25/o...
undark.org
AI Presents Science with a ‘Ship of Theseus’ Problem
Opinion | AI can replace each part of the scientific process, leaving the enterprise recognizable but devoid of human judgment.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
really neat tool! (as noted, the corrected URL is www.observingthecity.ca/intersection...)
observingthecity.ca
Toronto Intersection Counts
Every Toronto intersection the City has counted, mapped by how its traffic splits between cars, trucks, buses, people walking and people cycling.
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Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, PhD @mbonsma.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
In a massive dataset of over 10,000 cities around the world, the strongest association with distance travelled by cycling was not climate, topography, or even infrastructure - it was *gasoline prices* doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
Figure 3 from "Global health and climate benefits from walking and cycling infrastructure" by Adam Millard-Balla, Monisha Reginalda, Yasmina Yusufa, and Christopher Bian. The figure shows factors associated with distance travelled by cycling and walking, arranged in order of effect size. For cycling, the largest effects are gasoline prices, GDP per capita, rail service, steep terrain (negative effect), minimum temperature (negative effect), population density, and bicycle lanes. For walking, the largest effects are population density, gasoline prices, bicycle lanes, and maximum temp (negative effect).

Fig. 3 Caption: Factors influencing active travel. Each coefficient represents the impact of a one-SD change in each variable on the share of kilometers traveled by cycling (A) and walking (B). For each city-level variable such as density, the model estimates a separate coefficient for each country. The shaded area shows the distribution of country-level coefficients; for density, for example, the effect on walking ranges from about zero to ~0.11, excluding one outlier. For country-level variables such as gasoline prices, there is only a single coefficient. Variables are ordered by the size of their absolute effect in the median country—density and gasoline prices have the greatest impact on walking and gasoline prices and income (GDP per capita) on cycling. The minimum temperature variable shows the marginal effect of both the linear and squared terms.One might expect climate to have a major impact on active travel, and many studies highlight the impact of weather on daily and seasonal travel decisions (9, 25). However, in our model, there is a negligible association between precipitation and the mode shares of walking and cycling. Hotter temperatures decrease walking but have no effect on travel by bicycle. Colder temperatures only reduce walking and cycling in colder climates (SI Appendix for further Discussion). At the national level, gasoline price has the largest association with the share of travel by active modes. A one-SD increase in the price per liter (equivalent to US $0.40) is associated with a ~1.0 percentage point increase in walking and a ~0.5 percentage point increase in cycling—notable given that the mode share of cycling across the entire dataset is just ~0.9%. These findings echo a large volume of research that shows how vehicle travel declines in line with rising fuel prices (26). Gasoline prices also have an indirect effect in promoting denser, mixed-use development (27).
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Asher Cutter @asherdcutter.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Come to @romtoronto.bsky.social and EEB in Toronto! ROM is seeking entomologist/arachnologist curator who would also be faculty in EEB at UofT royalontariomuseum.applytojob.com/apply/mdMTpA...
royalontariomuseum.applytojob.com
Curator of Insects & Arachnids - Royal Ontario Museum - Career Page
Apply to Curator of Insects & Arachnids at Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, ON, Canada.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
had to check to make sure this wasn't the *other* front-page FT story today about crypto being used to evade sanctions to buy oil
screengrab of the art and headline from the Financial Times reading "How Poland lost $230mn trying to buy Venezuelan oil with crypto". The illustration (by Emanuel Santos) is a man falling a great distance, his face obscured by a shadow or possibly crude oil; he is surrounded by falling barrels of oil, Tether crypto coins, and oil tankers

story at: https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/8d0c18d7-c89c-4f80-871b-d964c0a2b809
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Dr Lindsay Tedds @lindsaytedds.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
The overall response rate for the 2026 Census of population reached 98.4% nationally. 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 www.canada.ca/en/statistic...
canada.ca
Statistics Canada thanks Canadians for their exceptional participation in the 2026 Census - Canada.ca
Thanks to outstanding participation across the country, the final response rate for the Canadian census is among the highest ever recorded.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I wore this shirt to a Jimmy Eat World concert and got a compliment on it (from a fan, not from Jimmy) so if you want to be cool I recommend you buy it
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Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
“Mathematics only makes sense as a gift economy. It has no trade secrets. Substituting a monetizable ersatz culture for the one evolved through historical experience is a particularly insidious form of knowledge collapse.” Mathematician Michael Harris on the AI companies coming for math:
bostonreview.net
Knowledge Collapse
AI companies are racing to mechanize mathematics. Where does that leave human understanding?
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
The CBC article's witness did describe a car braking and skidding so the driver noticed something at the last second. The traffic cam photo also has some skidding www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/artic...
ctvnews.ca
2 people make it to shore after crashing car into Mooney’s Bay
Two people were able to make it to shore after crashing their car into the water at Mooney’s Bay early Friday.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
this screams "distracted driving" to me tbh
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Ben Martin @benjaminmartin.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Come be my colleague! Montreal is a great place to live and work! Tenure Track position at @mcgill.ca in quantitative cell biology with a research program to address fundamental questions in biology. @futurepislack.bsky.social mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/McGill_Caree...
mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com
Assistant Professor in Quantitative Cell Biology - Department of Biology
Please refer to the How to Apply for a Job (for External Candidates) job aid for instructions on how to apply. If you are an active McGill employee (ie: currently in an active contract or position at ...
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
isn't this kind of like saying "the spine isn't the entire skeleton"?
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
"A 2024 city staff estimate for removing the bike lanes pegged the cost at $48 million"
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Angela Saini’s Superior: The Return of Race Science is an excellent overview
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
“dougfordenwagenkrieg”?
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
is there a German word for when a city places signage telling cyclists/scooters not to use the sidewalk “for safety” next to an obviously unsafe road?
A notice on a Toronto sidewalk saying "DON'T RIDE ON THE SIDEWALK"The busy intersection of Queen and Roncy, with multiple lanes of traffic including large vehicles, parked vehicles along the curb, and streetcar rails. A bike lane is visible I. The distance, unfortunately it is 10 metres long and goes straight into a parked carA sign at a bus station in Waterloo, ON saying "No riding or parking on sidewalk"The intersection of University and Albert in Waterloo, ON. The intersection is very large and designed to encourage turns at high speeds.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Just finished this and it explained a lot of overlap in Types of Redditor
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
hot take: bulldoze the Gardiner to make way for HSR
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James McLeod @jamespmcleod.ca · 19/08/2026
By tracking mentions of sovereignty in the House of Commons, and conducting linguistic analysis, we can say that there's never been another moment like this in Canadian political history. Cool analysis by my colleagues at @canadianshieldinstitute.ca. canadianshieldinstitute.ca/updates/cana...
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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
New from 404 Media: we solved which AI company is buying massive shipments of rare books, scanning and destroying them to train AI. We put an Apple AirTag in a rare book, followed it. It ended up at an Amazon facility. Its logo is a dinosaur ripping through a book www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...
404media.co
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility
We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.
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Oh The Urbanity! @ohtheurbanity.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Bloor Street is the spine of the bike network in Toronto. Ripping it out would be like removing Saint-Denis in Montreal.
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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 11/08/2026
BIG NEW piece by me. A few years ago, if you asked me to summarize my entire worldview in one article, I would’ve said it was too broad and too difficult. But this year, I decided to do it.
worksinprogress.co
Every disease is a policy failure
Few people know how much medicine has progressed in their lifetimes. Fewer know how much faster it could be progressing.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
the only way for bluesky to grow is to allow users that are not 38 and that is a sacrifice i am not willing to make
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Concerning thread about how Wikipedia and, especially, Grokipedia promote genetic essentialism even though academic research does not support these views
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
I noticed that too, interesting that it's a Grokipedia tic
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
This was a very eye-opening and sprawling project and I think gives a lot of insight into how our research lives online. A *huge* thank you to Sohini for her guidance, to my co-authors Abby and Sophia for helping to collect and manage data, and those who offered their thoughts while I was writing.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Grokipedia represents the polar opposite: remixing, misrepresenting, and fabricating research with AI to generate scientific racism at scale. For now, its traffic is paltry compared to Wikipedia (~1 million vs 2 billion monthly views), but it represents a grim new frontier.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
There are many possibilities going forward. Wikipedia, for all its flaws, is a good faith attempt to represent expert consensus. Hereditarian writers are not considered reliable sources because users in 2020 (citing many scientific writers and scientific orgs.) concluded it was unscientific.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
There's danger in ignoring this. Extremists frequently leave manifestos mentioning genetics, part of (to borrow from theconversation.com/the-shooting...) a "curriculum of violence". But we also know from that education can reduce genetic essentialism and racism (e.g. www.science.org/doi/full/10....)
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
There's huge room for improvement for scicomm here. What *is* a cluster? What does it mean to be "distinct"? "Distinct" compared to what? What's in a biobank? What's an admixture plot telling us? A PCA plot? Most guidance on writing is aimed at technical audiences, but little is aimed to the public.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
We found many discussions between Wikipedia editors disliking "Genetics" sections for similar reasons. But geneticists keep putting out papers about national biobanks, genetic histories, PCA plots and population clusters--often with no public guidance on how to interpret the fairly arcane methods.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
So what does all this mean? Regarding Wikipedia, we argue that its discrete structure and page format are priming the public for genetic essentialism. People curious about, say, an ethnic group will repeatedly see a "Genetics" section and may start thinking of groups being defined by genetics
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
(I really cannot overemphasize how racist Grokipedia is. The page "Black people" mentions genetics in every section, almost exclusively in a negative light, except for "Achievements and Contributions", which doesn't mention genetics at all.)
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Grokipedia defines race by genetics, and also states that population-scale differences in IQ and crime rates are genetically caused. Comparing the Wikipedia and Grokipedia case study pages, genetics terms are more prominent on Grokipedia, and the citations are often total nonsense (see alt text).
A screenshot from the Grokipedia page "Black people". The first sentence defines black people as a genetic cluster, citing Rosenberg et al., 2005 (https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070). The Rosenberg paper does not state this at any point.

The last sentence states "Black populations have produced notable figures in civil rights, athletics, and entertainment, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, while facing documented group-level disparities in socioeconomic outcomes, health, and crime rates across diaspora communities, which empirical studies link to a interplay of genetic, cultural, and institutional causal factors amid debates over environmental versus heritable influences.[7]". Citation [7] is a total fabrication, pointing to a link that lists the population densities of African countries (https://worldpopulationreview.com/continents/sub-saharan-africa)Ranking distinct terms in the Grokipedia and Wikipedia pages for "Ashkenazi Jews". The top term on Grokipedia is "IQ", while for Wikipedia it is "people". Genetics- or hereditarian-related terms on Grokipedia include "selection", "cognitive", "bottleneck", and "intelligence".Comparing distinct terms from the Grokipedia and Wikipedia pages for "Black people". Many top terms in Grokipedia are related to genetics or hereditarianism ("IQ", "variants" as in "genetic variants", "structure" as in "population structure"). The top term is "rates", referring to socioeconomic measures such as homeownership rates, crime rates, etc. The top term on Wikipedia is "aboriginal" as in "Aboriginal Australians", who are never mentioned in Grokipedia.Distinct terms on the Grokipedia vs Wikipedia page for "White people". The most common terms on Grokipedia are related to ancient ancestry (e.g. the top term is "steppe" as in "steppe herders") and have many genetics-related terms (e.g. "clusters" as in "genetic clusters", "analyses" as in "genetic analyses" or "principal component analyses"). The top terms in Wikipedia are largely historical, referring to centuries or specific ethnic groups.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
So genetics-and-nationality are being propagated by AI to some degree. But what about an AI-generated encyclopedia, like Elon Musk's Grokipedia? We found it mentions genetics more often than Wikipedia in nationalities, but the case study pages are especially egregious (next post).
A bar graph of thet number of genetics keywords in Grokipedia text vs Wikipedia text. The pages compared are the 130 national-level demonyms that existed on both websites. Positive values indicate that the Grokipedia page had more genetics words; negative values indicate that the Wikipedia page did. The majority of Grokipedia pages had more genetics keywords than their Wikipedia counterparts.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Wikipedia is an influential data source for chatbots (though we don't know how important). We prompted ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to "tell me the history of [nationality]" and got genetics keywords in 31%, 18%, and 10% of responses, with "Wikipedia" mentioned in 83%, 100%, and 95% (respectively)
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
The page "White people" had a "Genetic History" section that was spun off into the page "Genetic history of Europe" in 2006. This is an interesting example of the enmeshment of race and genetics in the information ecosystem.
A screenshot of the Wikipedia page "White people" (revision 71935134) from August 26, 2006. The first section of the page is titled "Genetic History of Europe" with subsections titled "Paleolithic", "Neolithic", "Later migration from Asia", "North African and Near Eastern influences", and "Sub-Saharan African slaves". The section "Genetic History of Europe", by this point in time, had its own Wikipedia page, showing how modern genetic studies were used to define "white" in the information ecosystem.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
We looked at race, genetics, and hereditarianism in three case study pages. The page "Ashkenazi Jews" had text about IQ and genetics on and off until 2023. The page "Black people" cited hereditarians like Rushton and Jensen as late as 2007 regarding definitions of race.
A screenshot of the Wikipedia page "Ashkenazi Jews" from April 10, 2006 (revision 47772546). There is a section titled "Population genetics" with three subsections: "Specific diseases", "IQ and scientific achievement", and "'Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence'", referring to a paper by Cochrane, Hardy, and Harpending.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
We use nation-level demonyms (e.g. "Spaniards", "Somalis", "Mexicans") as a proxy for nationality. When they exist, these pages have genetics sections often (53%); When Wikipedia users are curious about a nationality, they're going to see a "genetics" section very often.
A map of the world. Countries are coloured green if the page for their demonym has a section dedicated to genetics (e.g. the page "Spaniards" has a section titled "Historical origins and genetics"). They are coloured yellow if their demonym page does not have a genetics section, and are grey if the country does not have a page for its demonym.A time series for 137 Wikipedia pages about national-level demonyms (e.g. "Spaniards", "Somalis", "Mexicans") running from 2001 to December 31, 2025, tracking the contexts of any genetics keywords in the pages. 

We identified the types of sections where genetics keywords appeared and use the section title to determine its context, e.g. if a section was titled "Genetic origins", this would count as a "Biology" context and "Origins" context. Starting in ~2011, the "Biology" context became the most common by far---around this time, genetics sections in these pages started appearing more frequently.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
We downloaded wiki markup from 3 million historical revisions and text-mined them, tracing genetics-related keywords, and analyzing when and how they appear. Some findings: Wikipedia pages ethnic/national groups increasingly have "Genetics" sections, especially highly-viewed pages
Markup from the Wikipedia page "Russians" with text related to genetics highlighted. 

e.g. in the text

Central and Southern Russians, to which the majority of Russian populations belong, according to [[Y chromosome]] R1a, are included in the general "East European" [[gene cluster]]

the strings"gene" and "Y chromosome" are highlightedAn example of a "Genetics" section rendered from the markupThe corresponding text generated from the markup.In the Wikipedia pages about ethnic, national, and racial groups that we examined in our study, genetics sections (i.e. sections with titles like "Genetics", "Genetic origins", "DNA studies", etc.) have gradually become more common. By December 31, 2025, 419 pages (6.4%) had a section dedicated to the genetics of the group. These pages tend to be highly-viewed; in the top 1000 most-viewed pages, 304 (30.4%) had genetics sections.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Population geneticists don't think of, say, ethnic groups as genetically discrete and homogeneous, but is that what gets across? Wikipedia is a natural experiment--what happens to our research "in the wild"? We looked at 6,700 Wikipedia pages about ethnicity, nationality, and race over 25 years.
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
How does human genetics research live in the information ecosystem? Is it misused? Misrepresented? In my paper with @sramach.bsky.social, we tackle this question with 25 years of Wikipedia data, AI chatbot responses, and pages from Grokipedia www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
From Wikipedia to AI: Measuring 25 years of synthesis of human genetics research in the public-facing information ecosystem
Genetics research frequently intersects with ethnicity, nationality, and race, making it uniquely vulnerable to misrepresentation. Yet, 25 years after the initial sequencing of the human genome, there...
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Alex Diaz-Papkovich @alexandr.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Hearing Young Liars live was like a religious experience, glad The Youths are getting exposed to them
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